A Golden Ending (Part 3)
Log Info
- Title: A Golden Ending (Part 3)
- GM: Riptide
- Place: Border Ethereal / the Golden Sands
There are two Runes, two Harkashans, one memory in a dream.
Rune, who is dying. (All who are living are dying, too.)
And then there's Rune, who dies. But.
There's something about the span of seconds, the passage of time, the run of sand in the hourglass. There's space between them. Space between them. A door is a space in between rooms, in between one space that leads into another, and yet it is not. Like Rune's mother, who is alive and is not. Like Rune's mother, who exists in all time and does not exist.
But now is the moment. From the memory of the dying Rune, Slixvah can see golden threads emerging from her form, from that hole in her back. A hole is a space. A hole is... a door?
GAME: Slixvah rolls spellcraft: (5)+18: 23
Memories and dreams can be strange things. A barque on an endless sea, bearing the custodian of good and insightful dreams. Paths to take where no one could know what truths would be revealed.
But even with all of that, Telamon can't help but flinch at the sight of Rune's shattered body. Now that he's not wreaking arcane annihilation, he can see the golden threads. Tangled around Harkashan, around the other members of her party.
Tel looks at the others, his expression pained. "Does anyone else see this? Slix, Lana? The threads?"
Even when girded against the moment. Warned and prepared. It still doesn't stop the avian screech of grief that rips from Slix's throat. She clutches at her chest, the physical pain of overwhelmed emotion choking her up. "RURU!"
Her robes shift. Something climbs out, a tiny white bird, peering out. Their golden eyes widen, then narrow, before pecking relentlessly at the witch's neck. She yelps in pain, trying to cease the familiar- "Unmesi, you daft fool, look. LOOK," the little bird tinnily twitters.
Through tears, she rubs at her eyes, forcing herself to look at her perished friend and the poor makari that has to behold her. She follows the golden threads out. They don't go anywhere, except...
She pauses. Then hoarsely laughs, fighting back a sob. "Yeah, I see it. This is /not/ I wanted ta get closer to ya, hon."
Slixvah steps forward, shakes her head, and sticks her hand into the hole in Rune's back.
There's a deep and unmistakable grimace on Harkashan's expression as the bolt meant for him slams into Rune's body. A moment that shattered more than just Rune's skin. Shattered more than just her body, and her life. It shattered a journey, and damaged a bond. A welling of tears at the edges of the Sith-makar, drawn away by the current moment to act, else this pain will be relived for naught. Stepping forward, as Slixvah sees something thy had missed.
Harkashan turns, following the path of the golden fate's threads. This isn't the first time he's seen them - so when Telamon calls them out, he nods his head; "We have seen them before. When one casts spells of True Seeing and their kin, they become visible." He runs a hand along one of them coming off of himself; "Golden Threads of Fate. Of Connection." He explains.
"Rune..." He rumbles with a deep ache in his voice, as he tries to physically avoid making contact with his own former self. The one that is cradling her, crying out her name. That younger self, cursing the fact he'd not even told her that he cared for her. Too bound to his thoughts of duty... leaving him there with naught but regret.
Words he knows, he would not get to share for a long... long time after that.
In that span of seconds, the two Runes feel as one. The burbling, clawing, desperate need for breath that only results in that warm trickle of blood from her lips and down across her jaw. The sight of Harkashan above her, with all the regrets that come with words left unspoken. The fear... pulse like drumbeats. The cold... the bitter cold that starts in her limbs and ends in that horrible stillness.
Then, it is all shattered, sharp edges and reflections. Jagged pieces lash out with countless possible pasts and futures. Horrors that scratch at her every being as she claws desperately for soemthing, anything other than that cold feeling of drowning in shattered panes of glass.
Then, at that moment that Slixvah's hand passes through that threshhold, Rune is ejected from that moment with a force that leaves her gasping. Her form is thrown onto the ground, where she curls into a fetal position, one hand at her chest, the other at her throat as she takes quick, frantic breaths, shivering from the lingering cold. "Fffuck."
Well, she is still Rune, afterall...
Cor'lana doesn't get much of a moment to offer her input. Slixvah's touch and its results on Rune have her blinking in bewilderment. "Rune--"
The memory vanishes. The battlefield, the Charneth, all gone. But that space that Slixvah's hand was in--it morphs. Wriggles away from her touch and skitters a few feet away from the party--drawing Phea to stand defensively in front of her wish-parents--
"Alive, but dead." The voice is a woman's. But who? No. Rune knows. It's the deep and feminine voice that she's heard before. From Lady Amalta, the seer channeling. From the vision in Mikilos's store. Harkashan and Slivah know it, too, from the vision that the chaneque gifted to them. It reverberates in the dream around them.
"The hourglass is stalled. Suspended. At last it can be over. Open it."
The last two words are authoritative words, and then that space with all of its golden threads... It grows, ascending from the ground in dark dreaming space and forming a door, gilded with gold along its edges.
There is a lock on the door.
It's like the vision they were all experiencing got 'swallowed up'. And all that remains is the moment itself. There's a creepiness to the way the space Slixvah's hand was in 'wriggles' away and moves around. Shifting, as a voice speaks. Until it finds its spot, growing into the door they'd been seeking.
But more importantly, being notably a /locked/ door. An Adventurer's true foe... it must always come back to a door.
However, with Rune being 'ejected' out of that vision, Harkashan is quick to call for her name. Instinctively he kneels down next to her and heals her, regardless of whether or not it'd have an effect. That warm red glow of his healing enveloping her and suffusing into her.
"Are you okay?" He asks, taking her hand. Looking at her.
He knows what needs to go into that lock. Blue has shown them.
There was not a whole lot Aelwyn could do but observe - his head had turned when everything changed. It took him a moment to gather his bearings, to hear other voices than the thrum in his ears, and slowly he follows on after the others.
"It is in the past," The shorter makari tells Harkashan, putting his hand on the larger makari. "Is it, not?" His orange eyes turn towards Slixvah approaches Rune. He didn't even try to understand what she was trying to do. "All that matters, is now." He rumbles by himself.
And then everything changes. Again. "Twin!" Reflexively, as Rune gets ejected, the draconian steps closer. "Is she alright?" - and then the voice speaks, and his hand swings his polearm around towards the hole, as he stands close protectively. "This one shall not pretend to understand."
Slix's attention dips from the lamenting Harkashan down as she sees Rune fall back into reality. "Oh thanks th' gods--"
Everything vanishes. The golden thread culmination shivering and moving away from the poorly placed hand. She stiffens at the voice. Out of nature, she looks around, trying to find the source. But her sight spies all the threads moving to form into a lock, the voice commanding them to press forth. She knew what must be done. "Th' less ya try ta understand, Flutter, th' easier it makes sense," she smiles wanly at him, her nerves frayed as she steps behind him and closer to the group.
Telamon stares steadily as the door snaps into existence. It's more than a door, really, but a door is probably what they interpret it as best. "...Alright," he says after long moments. "The past is done. Time to settle it, resolve it." He reaches up to rub his temples, his starry eyes focusing.
"I guess the question is, how do we unlock it? Because I don't think a chime of opening will cut it for something like this. And I'm pretty sure disintegrating it's off limits as well." Telamon puts his arm around Cor'lana, and he smiles at her a bit before looking to Hark and Rune. "Your call."
"Rune's got the key," Cor'lana explains to Telamon, leaning into his embrace. She sighs a little, catching her breath. There's a lot to process here. She offers Phea in front of both her and Telamon a little grateful look, before she gives Telamon's shoulder a little kiss. For luck.
Those first few breaths in the aftermath of the memory seem to breathe warmth into her lungs, like stepping inside after a blustery winter's day. One, two, and then voices begin to reach her ears again and Rune groans softly, pushing herself up. "About as fine as you'd expect for having a hole blasted through me." The healing energy seems to help her recover a bit quicker, even if it does little for the gruesome shape she has in this land of dreams.
As for the others, she looks up, giving a nod. "I'll be alright..." She looks to Slixvah, chirping her thanks before leaning onto Harkashan's arm in order to get to her feet. The half-sil is a little unsteady, but she takes a step forward, pulling the familiar necklace that she always wears, over her head.
"I... have the key." She repeats Cor'lana's words, looking to Telamon. "I've always had it. Since... the beginning." Some of those gathered have seen this already, when she had asked them on this adventure.
Stepping towards the door, Rune holds the key in her hand and repeats the word: "Unlock." Where once the necklace sat, there is now a key. One which she holds out to unlock the door before them.
The door unlocks with the turn of Rune's key--or so one must assume. The key turns it. But there's no click. Nothing to indicate the lock is disengaged and that the party can go in.
Instead, the door... drifts away from Rune's key. Opening slowly to reveal sand.
Golden sands that stretch across an endless horizon, an azure sky unlike any that anyone has ever experienced above.
Phea shifts uneasily on her feet. "I will stand guard," she says. "The rest of you should proceed."
She looks at Telamon and Cor'lana a moment with those red eyes of hers. "This is where we part for now," she says softly. "Please keep her safe, Wish-father."
Then Phea shifts into a white wolf--a little larger than the average beast, and she gives a howl before she scampers off into the darkness. Presumably to secure the boundary.
GAME: Slixvah rolls alertness: aliased to perception+2: (18)+16+2: 36 GAME: Aelwyn rolls perception: (7)+1: 8 GAME: Harkashan rolls Perception+2: (19)+18+2: 39 GAME: Rune rolls perception: (7)+27: 34 GAME: Telamon rolls perception: (5)+33: 38
Harkashan smiles as she speaks further, and helps her up. Staying at her side at all times as she begins to move towards the door. One arm to her back, the other to her idle hand, keeping her steady the whole way.
"She'll be okay." He bids to Aelwyn as they come to a rest at the door. Waiting for Rune to open it with her key. Watching, as the door begins to drift away and opens to sands.
"The Golden Sands." Harkashan remarks to Rune. "No wonder we were unable to find them on any map." As he offers to help her across the treshold. Glancing from the corner of his eyes as he watches Phae transform into a wolf. But when he looks back, the shift in light, there's a speck out there.
"There's someone out there, waiting for us." He motions out into the distance. "Let's go."
The ruddy scaled sith-makar turns towards Slixvah and then he bows his head. The few ribbons on it still left tilt. "This one can assure Ribbon, that is not happening." His lips curl reassuringly and he moves to give her a reassuring arm-hug. "Yet at the least, she only has two beaks." He teases the egalrin, before he turns to look towards Rune.
The draconian's eyes turn as Rune starts to move towards the door. His orange eyes narrow in preparation - but it simply opens. "This one's gratitude for now and then." He tells Phea, before he waits to step into the portal after the others. That sky - momentarily, something else catches the Dragoon's attention and he leans down to pick up a particularly shiny pebble. "That sky," He says with wonder, rubbing the stone between his fingers, then turns towards Harkashan. "No sky like that one in the golden sands this one knows." With a flick of his tail, he bows his head and waits to follow, once again.
Some places, even dreams can't go. So Telamon simply raises a hand in farewell to Phea, smiling. "Until again, Phea. Say hello to your father for me." As she bounds off in wolf form, Telamon turns his eyes back to the doorway.
"Huh," he says. "Makes sense, though. Sands of time. Hourglass sand. We'll need to traverse it, but..." He pauses, stiffening. "There's someone out there. A ways off. I can just see him." Then his starry eyes twinkle. "Would you like me to get us there a little quicker? We don't -need- to walk all that way."
Cor'lana finds her eyes welling with tears as she watches Phea go, even wide-eyed as she is to watch her transform into a wolf. "May we meet again," she says softly, before she looks up at Telamon. "Someone out there?"
She squints at the desert in the doorway and... "Maybe we ought to walk in first?" she asks. "Before you go teleporting. It's a bit like... watching Pothy zoom into the table trying to get snacks? Probably want to line up the shot first."
Slixvah twitters back a welcome to Rune, her eyes closing with a bright smile. She ends up taking Aelwyn's arm in return, hugging and holding on to him. "Perhaps in hindsight," she snickers. "Don't want me to ta have mo' ta complain mo'?" But she stands by, watching with anticipation as the key morphs into being. And the door... melts away? Into sand. Golden sand. She blinks, squinting against the bright blue sky. The hue far beyond anything vivid she's lived before in her time in the mountains. "I agree with tha', Aelwyn." The wolf gets a little nod of thanks, and a pin in it for later to figure out that bit of mojo. But she squints in the distance. The length not really fazing the avian. "I see it too, Telly. Heck yeah. Give us a lil' nudge!"
At the threshold, Rune pauses a moment to look back towards Phea. "Thank you... for helping us this far. I won't forget this." There are many debts earned and paid amongst those around her, but the white wolf is one that didn't have to offer her aid. So, it is appreciated that much more so.
Then, she looks towards those golden sands, taking a breath as she steps onto them, her feet sinking slightly. Her eyes scan out to the horizon, spotting that same figure that some of the others are already pointing out. "We're looking for my mother, and for the Golden Fate's beloved. I'm not sure if there are any others..." At this distance, it seems impossible to tell just who awaits them.
So, she steps to the side, allowing the others through before nodding to Telamon. "It's worth a shot, though, I have no idea how magic will work here." She murmurs, as she wraps the chain of her necklace around her wrist for the time being, incase it is needed again soon enough.
GAME: Telamon casts Greater Teleport. Caster Level: 20 DC: 26
The group joins together inside of the door, and then Telamon brings them together for a teleport. His target: the figure in black across the desert.
Except...
The desert looks different than before when they land. It's still an azure sky up above. But the group is on a path, one worn in by many, many tracks of feet.
Along the path, however, are... Bodies. Many dead bodies. Except none are decayed. Not even the scent of decay on them. They look like glassy-eyed statues. They all look familiar to those who know her: Kiira Theran, Rune's mother.
Fifteen feet ahead of the group, standing on the path of treaded steps, is a tall figure in black--some sort of veil drawn over them that falls all the way down to the ground, making it hard to get a look at the figure. The figure stands completely still, like the bodies in mounds around the group.
Normally, Harkashan wouldn't be too unnerved by loads of bodies. Certainly, they'd not spotted them from beyond. But when their teleportation ends, Harkashan's nostrils flare for a moment.
"They do not speak of natural Death." Harkashan remarks. "They smell of these sands, part of this place." He bids to the group, his tail lashing at the sands in an irritated pattern. So much death, all to a single person. The Death Singing Dragon no doubt would find this as much anathema as Harkashan does - he thinks to himself.
Ahead of them, the figure. He squeezes Rune. Trying to keep her from focusing on all of the 'dead mothers'.
The teleport wraps the party in a multicolored sphere, depositing them someplace else... and Telamon regrets it. Because he sees all those bodies, all those images, the same person. He tenses, his hand twitching in Lana's, before he swallows. "I didn't see this, just..."
Then he realizes there's the person draped in black, just ahead. Silently standing there, like a sentinel. Tel's eyes narrow. "And are you the warden of these uncounted lost lives?" he asks in a sharp tone to the figure. Evidently the repeated horrors are just making him angrier.
Slixvah nods towards Rune. Look for her mother. She's seen them before. Sort of- stuck in crystal. Beside the point. And forth they go! Man, this teleporting business was getting easier- oh. Slix blinks, looking down and around with morbid curiosity and mild shock. "... well... damn. Dey all th' attempts ya momma did," she hypothesizes, kneeling down next to one. Briefly. As Telamon brings attention to the all-black clad figure. Naw. That ain't the Harpist. Naw. Can't be.
Aelwyn flashes his teeth at Slixvah. "When does one run out of things to complain about?" He bumps his hips against her and then gives a blank stare at the discussion about teleporting. "Tch." He rolls his shoulders - uncomfortable with the thought, but it was an easy feeling to dispel, as his fingers squeeze around his black polearm. The tiny red ribbon ripples near the tip. "Wherever Twin shall step, this one shall follow."
As they arrive at the new, even more alien scene, Aelwyn looks at Harkashan and he nods his head in agreement. "They are like sand sculptures." Probably. His eyes turn towards Rune and Harkashan, and he clicks his teeth. "Nothing more than sand sculptures." Once again, his attention is taken by the new figure and he resumes his grip onto his glaive defensively.
Lana nods a little to Telamon's touch, squeezing his hand a little as her brows are furrowed. "No one saw it," she says, before she lowers her voice. "Something's... weird here. Tel, there's something above that figure, but I can't... make out what? Like the air is strange about them."
The moment that the spell ends and the world focuses around her, Rune's breath catches. So often, this woman's face has lived in her fondest memories and her most heartwrenching moments. Now, it stares back at her from so many dead faces. One hand goes up to her mouth, as if she were trying to keep down the contents of her stomach. The sight may not be gruesome to some, but to Rune, it is a horrific sight.
Eventually, with trembling fingers, her hand lowers. "They failed... all of them." Rune doesn't even seem to notice the few tears escaping down her cheek. Her blue eyes flick to Slixvah, "I think you're right..." When Aelwyn calls them sand sculptures, she just shakes her head, that look of horror lingering in her expression.
Then, she looks to the figure, stepping towards it. "Whomever you are... I'm sure you know why I'm here. I'm here to end this." Despite the confidence in her words, there is a slight tremble in her voice, likely because no matter where she looks, it is her mother's dead face that she sees.
"The egalrin woman has the right of it. And so do you, Rune." The tone is all-too-familiar to Rune. It's her mother's voice, coming from that figure clad in black. "Representations of all of the times in which I have been here. Representations of all of the times that I have tried. Representations of all of the times that I have failed. A graveyard of solely me--and yet not a graveyard at all. My bones are not buried here."
Then the black cloth flies from the form, falling into the air like a shadow traced by the quick passage of intense light. Kiira Theran is revealed, her arm up in the air from when she'd tossed the cloth.
"I wish to end this too," she says gently. "But I cannot. The curse ended the effect on the Golden Fate... But I am stuck."
This time, everyone can see them. Golden threads, flowing out of Kiira's back like puppet strings, connecting all the way up into the sky and eventually fading into nothing. She looks like a very complicated marionette--if she weren't a person.
"Please, Leirune," she says softly. Emotion's in her voice, in her eyes. "Please."
And she opens her arms. "You _have_ to end this."
GAME: Slixvah rolls sense motive+2: (2)+7+2: 11 GAME: Aelwyn rolls sense motive: (14)+5: 19 GAME: Telamon rolls sense motive: (16)+29: 45 GAME: Rune rolls sense motive: (19)+9: 28 GAME: Harkashan rolls Sense Motive+2: (19)+24+2: 45
That expression, that voice, that posture. It's one that he has, as a Deathsinger, seen more than a few times. It's not something one deals with easily, so Harkashan keeps quiet for now. As this is a moment for Rune to interpret what is going on. However, the way that those golden threads connect to... nothing up into the skies feels strange.
He turns his head up for a moment, squinting his eyes and peering closer, before looking back down. A concerned rumble escaping him.
In earnest, what does one say in a moment like this? Even a Deathsinger does not know for certain.
Slixvah's heart breaks a little bit at seeing Rune's horrors being played out, her leaning against Aelwyn as he bumps him "Never, then I'd be borin'," she mutters to him before pulling back. Her attention snaps to the figure calling out her guess. And her head snaps up to follow the fabric. She looks back down. Blinks.
Blinks again. It was a grandiose sight to behold. One holding their arms out, standing with a marionette of shimmering golden threads going off into the sky. "Don'chu worry', we'll get it figured out," she hums to Kiira. Too distracted to catch Hark's concerned rumbles.
Telamon's eyes flash as the figure casts off their veil and... his hands, already coming up, stop. Because the woman is on strings. Golden threads, not just the skeins of fate but a tangle of lines binding Kiira Theran.
A long moment, before he speaks. "There must be a way to set this right without ending you. Is there no other solution? Could we not bring you back with us?"
Aelwyn looks towards Kiira for a time, looking at her expression; but his attention is quick to turn towards Rune and Harkashan. As the Deathsinger stays quiet, so does he; his fingers rubbing the shiny pebble he stole a while back.
He had the urge to ask from Kiira what she meant - but then Telamon's words confirm what he suspected. "Does it have to be her?" He quietly asks. It was a cruel task, and his heart felt hollow at the thought of what Rune had to go through.
Cor'lana's lips are set in a frown, and she wraps her arm around Telamon's. Once upon a time, they'd learned to cast spells, arm-in-arm with one another. This is... Not one of those times.
"I feel much the same as my husband," she says. "I don't want this to be... The end. The only way."
Her violet eyes drift onto Rune. "There has to be another way," she says softly.
The voice is what stills Rune in her tracks. Once, that voice had been full of life. Stories and songs and tales of far off places and distant adventures. It was a voice that had shaped her in those formative years, and one that was carried with her long after the person who bore it had been buried. A voice that had haunted Rune since the first time she heard it echo in that Am'shere cave those long months ago.
"I know where they are buried, because I used to go there every day, when I was a girl. Just hoping that some of my words might reach you." This person is an echo, a phantom of the woman she knew, but they are still the same in so many ways that it causes that aching feeling around her heart that she felt so often in that graveyard.
The half-sil is crying now, openly and without shame. No matter how much she might tell herself that this person isn't real, the fact that this is her mother, in some way or another, is a feeling she can't quite shake. It is impossible for her to face this without all the loss and sadness that comes with it.
And yet, in that moment, Rune and Kiira stand at opposites. Rune, who has fought for every last breath since the moment that she died that first time. Who had clung to her friends and those little moments that mean everything. "I'm not here to kill you." She can read that defeat in the woman's body language. Kiira, who had died these so many times, seeing this final death as the only answer.
"I'm here to free you. Whatever that might mean..." Rune shifts her hand, holding the key and then speaking the word: "Unbind." The key becomes scissors, ones meant to cut the threads of fate. She turns to look at her friends, "I don't know what will happen, but... my mother gave me the tools to do this, so I'm going to use them."
So, Rune will move towards one of those outstretched threads to try and snip it away.
GAME: Slixvah rolls 1d100: (96): 96 GAME: Telamon rolls 1d100: (57): 57 GAME: Rune rolls 1d100: (55): 55 GAME: Ravenstongue rolls 1d100: (40): 40 GAME: Harkashan rolls 1d100: (28): 28 GAME: Aelwyn rolls 1d100: (50): 50
The scissors go to cut thread. Slender little scissors meant to snip just a few threads at a time. Rune has a long away to go. The threads glide against the metal...
Freedom is a thing that is hard to truly understand for those who have always known it in some measure. It's a thing that's easily taken for granted, easily taken for what it is and never thought of beyond the pleasures of life for having had it on the occasional good day. But this quality, too, is what makes it just as hard to accept for those who have been trapped. Because they have taken for granted that they will never be free. It's a distant dream, a dream that is not theirs to have.
And yet there are times where the dream comes real. As Kiira watches Rune work--she looks amazed. Amazed as she looks down at herself, like there aren't wounds pouring forth blood onto the desert sands below, crimson to stain the golden land like she might have expected. She's not bleeding. She's not dying.
Not this time.
"How?" she asks. "How? All this failure, and... The scissors were meant to... I'm supposed to..."
Harkashan remains with Rune. Quiet, as she cries. There is no shame in this. In fact, Harkashan mourns alongside of her. Pressing the side of his muzzle against her cheek in that moment. Holding her, offering a place to cling. But this gift she is granting to the one before her, it is one for her to give.
Telamon watches, and suddenly his expression changes. Becomes one of surprise, and then understanding. Revelation. "You couldn't," he says to Kiira. "Because you were on the inside of the pattern. If you're on an island without a boat, you can't sail to shore."
He holds up his hand, palm up, and a shimmering loop appears over it. "But if someone can make their way to you, outside the pattern, they can send a skiff to pick you up. Throw you a line. Or cut you loose." His eyes glimmer softly. "I don't know if we can speed up this process... Lana, if we haste Rune, will she be able to cut quicker?"
Aelwyn observes as Rune steps up towards the threads, scissors in hand. Of course, she would have come prepared. He quiets and looks on; fingers twisting his glaive in hand. Instead of it all, he moves up next to Harkashan. To stand in support, perhaps, or in preparation for something worse to happen.
"She is strong," The shorter draconian tells the larger makari.
Cor'lana studies mother and daughter, and... "Well, every time Rune and I have gone to speak with Glasina--'Blue'--she's always talked about a golden ending. A golden ending is something in which everyone lives. When a Theatre District show is tragic, we often talk about wanting a golden ending--where everyone lives. Where everyone's happy. And..."
She lifts a hand to wipe a tear from her eye. "Sometimes, people do write a new story. Inspired by the old tragedy, they write their own. One where people get to live. One... Where Kiira Theran gets to live."
The sorceress takes a little breath. "I could supply it," she says, "but this is Rune's story. It's up to her. Want the help, Rune?"
Slixvah steps up next to and just behind Rune and her makari rock. She inhales deeply, and folds her hands in front of her as Rune gets to work. It was a sad affair, to let it go....
Or. Did they? As the threads twinge away, something she all too used to doing on her own accord, Telamon's insight gives her an out of the box idea.
Her head swivels from Cor'Lana, to Kiira, to Rune. And a familiar curvy dagger pulls its way out from her robes, does a flip in the air, and lands in an open palm, dagger pressing against an ethereal, vaguely similar strand. "I /did/ get a lil' mojo tha' messes wit' dreams~" she sing songs. "Can help out Lana's idea. Give 'er a safety line."
There is a matter of care in how Rune snips those threads, meaning that it likely would take quite a long time given the weaving mess of them that surround the red-haired woman. the question of 'how?' is met with a look out towards her friends. "Because I'm not alone. Because every step of the way I've had people helping me get here. Not just these few, but Grandfather, Blue, Skielstregar, Simony, Irshya..." More names come, but eventually she shakes her head, knowing that she couldn't name everyone that has made this possible.
Her eyes look to Telamon, to Cor'lana, to Slixvah, to each who has offered their assistance, and she nods her head. "I trust each and every one of you with my life. If you think it will help, let's do this."
Cor'lana's words, however, do give her a moment where her expression shifts. Rune wants more than anything to believe that there is such a possibility. And yet, she has steeled herself for the fact that this is Fae business, which means that even if she does everything right, it may not turn out exactly as one might hope.
So, Rune keeps cutting, ready to accept whatever aid is tossed her way by her friends' magics.
GAME: Ravenstongue casts Haste. Caster Level: 19 DC: 22 GAME: Slixvah casts S5: Dream. Caster Level: 10 DC: 20 GAME: Telamon casts Greater Shadow Conjuration. Caster Level: 20 DC: 27
"And regardless of what happens, Rune... we are all here because we believe in you. And that we believe you can build this golden ending." Telamon smiles. "What's a little help between friends?"
With that, he begins to incant a spell as well, and black smoke trickles from his fingertips, boiling out and solidifying. What emerges is not some thunderous elemental or shadow-creature, but the elegant, graceful lines of a lillend azata, her face the same as Cor'lana's with hair as black as night. The lillend begins to play a sprightly tune on her lyre, a musical accompaniment guiding one's hands, calming one's nerves. The kind of song a farmer might enjoy hearing as he plants his crops, or a laborer might as he tackles a new project.
If there was one thing that Slixvah knew, is that luck and fate were /never/ set in stone. Her eyes widen briefly, then steel in a determined, mildly wild grin. "Of course, Ruru. Th' same applies ta ya! Lez shift fate!"
She watches Telamon summon forth a graceful figure, her expression brightening before she clutches her knife with both hands and presses her forehead against the flat of it. Starting quietly, she intones, voice growing louder and more disconcordant with each consonant.
"Ngsi itwh em, Ngsi ofr het arye
Ngsi ofr het nda ngsi ofr het raet
Ngsi itwh em, fi, si't ustj ofr odyta"
Cyan runes float off of Slixvah, ribbons and feathers floating before she lulls over, thonking against Aelwyn and dead weighting against him.
A figure, bright, cyan, and transparent, a near spitting image of the witch if her feathers never stopped growing and wafting out behind. In one hand is a single ethereal thread. "The Tapestry is never finished, nor what the next stitch is. Hark. Stories wend and weal. But they never end. They just get a new beginning."
The thread is cast forth towards Kiira with a loop, like a lifeline.
So many threads. Threads that give way under Rune's scissors, quickened by the magic that Cor'lana offers. Inspired by the lillend azata's music. Bolstered by Slixvah's invocation, the feathered weaver and unweaver of Tapestry becoming a songbird with plumage for all to envy.
Hope is a magic all of its own. And when the threads fall away, when Kiira is free... She looks at her hands. Her legs. And she gives herself small movements, almost dancerlike in motion.
She looks at Rune... And her eyes leak tears. So many tears. "You did it," she says softly. "I love you."
Three words that carry their own grace, their own power. She goes to embrace Rune, mindful of the scissors, and the moment that mother holds daughter, there's a rumble in the sands. The bodies all crumble, turning into sand. Endless sand. No more are there glassy-eyed copies of Kiira Theran, waiting for the passage of decomposition that never comes.
There is just Kiira. Only Kiira and her daughter, Leirune.
Tears fall from eyes. Kiira's crying just like Rune. It takes a moment for Kiira to collect herself enough, and while she does, eventually, let go of Rune, she doesn't go very far at all. "It's not done just yet," she says. "Next... We free the Bride."