Enemy of my Enemy

This time Dace is waiting by the pool. He sits on the edge of it comfortably, his eyes on the crescent moon in the waters. There's no similar moon in the sky however. The sky is empty blackness into which the pillars of the temple disappear. The cleric of the Red Maw is calm and peaceful-looking in this moment, and he doesn't look up until he is joined.

It is then that Cor'lana enters the dream, looking as imperial as she can manage in a royal-purple gown with bell sleeves that drape down, like the length of her dress, to the floor. Her violet eyes open, the soft glow of their enhancement following her into the dreaming, and she regards Dace with a nod.

"Good eve," she greets him. "We have what was arranged."

Floating along behind Cor'lana -- for this is her show, after all -- comes Telamon, hovering a couple inches off the ground. His hair drifts weirdly around his head, fanning out in a way suggestive of being underwater. His own eyes shine with a glimmer of starlight, and he nods politely to Zinskas, but says nothing. This is, after all, Cor'lana's show.

The cleric rises to his feet, a small hint of a smile touching the edges of his lips. "Excellent." He moves toward her slightly, stopping a short distance from her and taking the pair of them in. "Once you provide the scroll, I will be on my way."

GAME: Telamon rolls detectBS: aliased to sense motive: (4)+25: 29
GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Sense Motive: (17)+25: 42

Cor'lana holds out her hand, and the scroll appears. She quietly regards Dace as he approaches. Violet eyes inspecting him with that odd glow of theirs, subtle until one approaches closer.

"You're afraid," she says. "Of what is to come? Or what is in the current? Both?"

She's not judging him, really, as much as she is curious.

"Perhaps both," Telamon comments. "He risks much -- indeed, all -- in this endeavour. And yet he can do no less. There is no shame in fear so long as it does not -command- you. Only fools and the dead are without fear -- the living must endure it, or crumble." He stands apart for the moment, giving Lana -- and Zinskas -- space.

Dace takes the scroll, eyeing it for a moment and relaxing when it seems in order. He eyes Cor'lana and then Telamon. "It is as he says, a touch of both. Do not doubt that I will do what must be done in spite of any fear that I might feel." He lifts the scroll. "You should strike the encampment soon - I will work the magic immediately, and attack Marsward once it is done."

He nods to them and tucks the scroll into... nothingness. "I warned once that I might not be able to bring him down. It is now certainty that I will fail, but without his demonic support any strike you make against him in turn should succeed. I will wish you well in your endeavor."

With that, he turns to leave.

"Why now certain?" Cor'lana asks, raising a brow. The concern writes itself across her face quickly, before she has much of an opportunity to control how she presents itself. "Is it..."

She has a look on her face of dawning horror. "Is it Zalgiman?" she asks quietly. The name itself contains every ounce of hope and fear in her heart that she hopes it is not true. That he has not betrayed her.

GAME: Telamon rolls sense motive: (14)+25: 39
GAME: Ravenstongue rolls Sense Motive: (9)+25: 34

Telamon can't totally hide his expression of shock -- but then it transmutes into a grim mien. And a touch of, perhaps, unwarranted guilt. "What happened, Dace?" The use of the man's first name is deliberate. "We... were aware Seraquoix had resurrected Zalgiman. In a way that was..." He pauses, before continuing, "Dramatic. A shame he's a demon-devoted cultist, he'd make a good director for the theater."

He sighs. "What has transpired? I can see something has gone very wrong."

The fact that something has gone wrong is written clearly on Dace's face and he shakes his head. "He returned to the camp, and sided immediately with Marsward. Said that he was grateful that Marsward had returned him to life; that he'd been a fool to love a woman he hardly knew. I didn't know how much it was true, but Marsward praised him..." Dace took a breath and looked at them with a mixture of determination and sorrow. "Marsward killed him the next morning. Used his fiends to tear Zalgiman's soul free and turn him into a shade. Marsward doesn't have the power to command the spirit, nor Zalgiman's empty vessel, but V sent gifts to Marsward to give him that power."

Dace is silent a moment. "Zalgiman is a horror now; a creature that will crave the emotions that he did not find in life. A spirit bound to the nightmare-realm that Marsward half-worships. He will surely kill me before I can kill Marsward... but my soul is spoken for." There's a hardness in him, a lack of fear of the death that surely waits for him. "And I will try to weaken them both before they can end me."

She knew. Somehow, she knew. That the reason why Zalgiman hadn't reached back out to her wasn't because he was trying to infiltrate the camp again and convince Marsward he was a useful asset again. It was because her worst fear had come true.

Her thoughts are already racing. Her heart's shattered. For a moment, she feels entirely like a bird caught in the cage, like the sorrow that lingered with her since the day she'd been born had been lurking in the background and simply was waiting to drag her down to the ground, break her body open, and feast on her while she was still alive.

And yet it all came to a stop with one phrase:

"He swore to me and I to him."

The sentence rings out with more power than she'd intended. But she keeps going in the space that follows. Her hands kept barely from trembling only by the sheer will of her spirit. "I knew--I knew that this could happen. I swore to him that if Marsward turned him into something that should not be--I would do anything in my power to save him. And I have..."

Only now does her voice tremble. Like the slight shiver of a small bird's feathers with the gust of wind, but the bird still stays aloft in the skies where it belongs.

"I have what it takes to free him. I know I do."

For Telamon, knowing his fears were true is so bitter he would rather be wrong. Oh, to have been wrong. His eyes drop, and he bows his head... drifting over to place his hand on Lana's shoulder. What more needs be said?

But as Lana declares her intent, he lifts his gaze once more, and his expression sharpens. Cold, terrible, an infinite icy rage focusing down into a single point. "Not alone, Cor'lana. Never alone."

"We are going to hunt Marsward Seraquoix down, and we are going to -end- him." His gaze fixes on Dace Zinskas. "He will not savor his victory."

The man bows his head to the pair. "I will wish you luck." He says gently, turning and... vanishing. He leaves them quite alone, taking his scroll with him on his suicide mission. He doesn't ask for their aid, doesn't explain anything further. The silence in his wake makes the darkness around them all the darker.

Cor'lana does not shed tears. She does not do anything of the sort. She goes and she embraces Telamon, her arms tight around him. "Not alone. Never alone," she murmurs back to him.

She holds onto him a moment longer, before she leans up and her lips find his in a gentle moment that lingers still even as she pulls away. "Let us awaken," she says gently, her eyes closing as she begins to will herself awake.

Telamon nods soberly. "Agreed, love. We need to talk, and this isn't the place for it." He takes a deep breath, hugging her to him as he closes his eyes as well. Focusing on departing the world of dreams, and returning to the land of mortal joys and sorrows. A thread of weariness running through it all: he wishes he had been wrong about what would happen.

The dream shreds around them, as they will themselves to wakefulness. There's a sound in the waking world. Hurrying them toward awareness. A buzzing sound. A noise of distinction that can not be ignored. The totem that Telamon holds is vibrating in his grasp. Then a woman's voice rises from it. "The Black Moon Is Rising."

The voice only speaks once, and then the totem crumbles into dust.

It's the quickest that Cor'lana's ever gone from dreaming to waking. The sound of the voice is all that she needs to get her up from the bed that she and Telamon share in the interdimensional mansion and up to dress as quickly as she can, donning her adventurer's robes and tucking them into boots.

"And so do I," she murmurs. "We gather and we _go_, promptly, with all of the forces we can muster."

Telamon is shocked to find the totem has simply disintegrated, but -- there's no time. As Lana says, they need to go. And so he regretfully brushes some of the dust onto the nightstand, before starting to pull on his more sensible adventuring gear. "With any luck, we'll have to turn people away. There's a -lot- of folks eager to get some payback."

Scooping up his haversack, he pauses, then reaches inside. After a few moments, he sighs, shaking his head. "The staff is gone too. Guess it's up to us now -- we'll have to rely on ourselves, and each other."

-End