High Matron Etyl Za'Darmondiel.
High Cleric of Lilith; Fate and Drow Domains.
***
"So tell me, Matrons. Will you accept this change in life? Or in death?"
A bleeding, seething rage welled within me - within all of us, as those blasphemous words echoed from his mouth, ejecting a golden light to be occluded by a cloud of darkness that yielded only the sight of Yela, erupting in a blind rage on the far side of the chamber.
Silhouetted against this golden ring limning the chamber, we all saw her draw her scimitars and charge. And so too did we see the tiny vampire spread her robes and disappear in a blur of motion, meeting her rage with a graceful kick to the chest.
Her feathered robe flapped as their momentum halted, spinning her other leg into Yela's armored ribs to fling them apart, but not before that serpentine whip lunged forth to bite into Yela's shoulder.
Its fangs carved a coiled groove down Yela's arm as they flew apart, releasing a small blood shower that made the cleric's spirit flare with crimson mana. Yet, it did not leave her spirit in order to grasp Yela's blood from afar. It simply commanded it to congeal and be drawn into a thin spear that she launched as she flew away.
The rudimentary spell raced forward at an impressive speed, yet Yela was prepared. Her scimitar glowed as it dipped, its blade poised upward before it disappeared in a similar blur, dismantling the blood spear into a cloud of red mist held back by a ward of Yela's yellow arcana.
The first round went to the little Vampyr cleric, Tava. Unfortunately for her, she was running out of surprises, and Yela was undaunted. She distanced herself with a few swift strides while muttering a subtle healing prayer to our beloved Goddess; and Lilith heard our call louder than ever.
Crimson webs cascaded from Yela's mouth, undulating through her skin to stitch her arm back together within moments. Yet the vampyr had already acted, turning her back on Yela to step through the shadows and appear behind her just as the prayer was complete.
Her fangs sank into my daughter's neck before the webs could recede from her bloodied hand. But even then, Yela responded appropriately, throwing a solid wall of arcana from her back before spinning, leaping back with her hand pressed over her fresh wound.
Trapped between the wall and Yela's spell, the cleric laughed before her spirit bloomed, filling her body with that crimson arcana until she dissolved into a gilded cloud that gushed out the side and skirted the wall. The sight of it, the audacity, and perhaps the prowess displayed thus far made the crimson veil surrounding our spirits erupt, making the chaotic webs in our minds flare brighter than ever before.
Yela glowed with that violet-crimson aura as she bolstered herself. Webs poured from her hand, solidifying from the energy to cascade onto her wound and seal it shut - a far cry from the divine mana the great Lilith bestowed on us, for our eternal enemy gave just as much to his clerics.
The crimson daggers seemed to drink the ambient twilight as the young cleric came around to Yela's rear, their blades gleaming with light while the darkness attempted to pull them out of the path of Yela's dancing blades.
Yela began cackling with glee as the red aura merged with the yellow arcana, bolstering her physical prowess. Her dance accelerated into a frenzied blur, forever matched by the smaller blades of light and darkness forming from the shattered spells. Yet, it seemed with our Eternal Enemy, not even our fervor could be given lightly.
Even I struggled to see it. Thus, Yela had no chance of spotting the clerical vampyr emerging from the indiscriminate field of light and darkness with a dirk of black blood and an open maw poised at her neck. Her free hand lashed out to grasp Yela's white locks and pushed, using her absurd strength to send small cracks echoing through the cavern before a shuddering gasp signaled my daughter's demise.
Despite her weakness, Yela clawed, cursed, and stabbed at the unassuming beast clenched to her back, gorging herself on drow blood. Simultaneously, the vampyr thrust and flailed her dirk around Yela's face, scarring her pristine visage and painting it with black blood until her cursing turned to gargling and she staggered, leaning back with clutched hands while the dirk melted into Vampyric blood and flowed into her mouth. Yet, there was naught to show for even that, as the darkness consumed her body before it could fall, bringing the light and thus our eyes to Amun and that monstrous pet he kept.
They sat where they'd been, near the entrance, several dozen meters away and far beneath our terrace, laughing and smoking beneath that point of golden light while their minions pranced around the clouds of Gods-forsaken darkness, leaving us Matrons to try to sense what hid beyond the crimson webs spreading from our priestesses.
The pawns had yet to finish setting the tone. Moreover, the weak - the hasty ones like Yela and those without grace - had yet to be culled. But Lilith, most high, was with us. With her grace and my bolstered senses, I peered through the darkness to witness the first pawns engaging our eternal enemy.
A falling rock pierced through the veil of light, pulling my eyes to Nhilah, who deftly raised her hand to weave arcana into a spreading web of silk to catch the boulder in mid-flight. Thus opening her guard for the bald deep gnome's hammer, radiating light as it swung from low to high to crumple and throw her into a wall of darkness with ease. Yet no crash came from the black wall, only a ripple that eventually grew still.
Accompanied by a barbaric, undying shadow of surprising strength, the bald deep gnome sought to cull the Yela's 1st daughter, Nym. And yet, another undying shadow engaged Nyx and Naphyss; the small woman of darkness and arcane markings who accompanied the Destroyer as he entered. A weakling; easily killed, yet capable of reconstituting unceasingly, birthing a zeal in the sisters that led to their shrinking awareness.
They danced across the battlefield in chase of their prey, using Lilith's infinite grace and the abundant arcana to launch a more potent assault, uncaring of the other until the dancing shadow aligned them perfectly and turned their spells on each other. Crippled and maimed in their hands and jaws, they found themselves stripped of our Goddess' favor and fell pitifully to such a weak shadow.
Then, as if to further disrespect our great goddess, the shadow sought to enrage us over something as meaningless as some high priestesses who lost their favor.
She left Nyx and Naphyss clinging to life as she dragged them to our altar. Prayers erupted as that accursed drow approached to open a dark pit beneath them. Amusement flashed in his eyes and burned evermore, bathing the center of this great chamber in a radiance that pushed back the eyes of many, including mine.
Despite years growing accustomed to the light, I screamed great prayers to our Goddess while my eyes burned in the Brightest Night, for within its depths, its so-called Empress clutched onto a curiously thin rapier with enough zeal to draw blood through the gauntlets.
Her blood, blacker than the night she claimed, solidified into iron as it dripped drown the handle, elongating the haft and widening the thin point into a spear's leafed blade. Then she began praying, pouring that baleful light into her blood blade. "From dusk to dawn, and on to dusk, Zimysta has been given order and liberty, and now waits for the beat of the Darkheart, in His name.
"Long may his feathers reign!"
Her weapon slammed down with that declaration, injecting the chamber with an influx of corruptive energy that carved deep fissures in the stone as it raced toward our positions.
Though it was blocked or deflected with ease, that accursed light was not meant for us. It sank into the stone beyond this great chamber, boring through the depths of this ancient tower to crumple its foundation and release its remnants to the ruins of its supports, now corrupted into a glistening field of gaseous darkness.
Our proud platforms and daises, once looking over the ceremonial hall, had been split apart from the shock and scattered through the darkness to be lost between the collapsed walls and colossal chunks of our great tower, spinning fervently about G'eldantaar's crimson wood, inverted in this dark pit above the fallen Zimysta.
The altar, the pews, the webs above, and items of worship once spread below were sundered and erased; them and more. Nadra and her daughters were out of sensory range; as were the daughters of the other matrons, despite them being scattered several hundred meters across my flanks. Or, perhaps it was several dozen meters. This devil's darkness made it hard to tell.
The devil of drow blood.
"YOU!" I bellowed. The Matrons followed, filling the air with curses and prayer while the arcana went wild, flourishing from their spirits and amalgamating from the air to don them in armor, cast volleys of divine spells, and forge their arcane blades.
Mana forged scimitars in hand, I leaped into that eternal night with only my faith to guide me and my matrons to support me. The Elven Devil, with his beast of a drow, stood arrogantly as he flimsily swept a mass of white arcana - spatial magic - from his hand.
My scimitar's serrated, hair-thin edge rose sharply to carve into the spatial domain with glee, bisecting the mana and outright sundering the spell with the crimson crescent blade projected through the follow up. The arcane blade barreled toward our eternal enemy and I followed suit, somersaulting into a falling double slash that projected wider arcs of cream-colored energy than before.
Amun watched the oncoming rush with a careless eye and dodged them with the flair of a bard, sidestepping the crimson blades and scarcely backpedaling once the battered ground morphed into rolling web hills.
Spinning out a prayer, I twisted my body and found the familiar spring of webs beneath my feet and sprung, trusting the potent energies and my faith to guide my blades. The webs between us unraveled, and at last, when he turned, his placid eyes grew wide with surprise.
I bolstered my left arm and thrusted, aiming for his neck while my remaining weapon fell on an arcing sweep toward his ear. Wisely, he did the same, bolstering himself to duck, sidestep, and pivot into an air-compressing back kick. I grasped the arcana as I twisted my body to dodge, disrupting the paltry mass of air while I came around to his rear, crouched low, arms spread but closing into a double horizontal cross.
But of course, such things were not meant to be so easy.
A bestial eye of midnight colors was the only thing I saw before darkness blinked across my vision. Pain, searing and enraging, rattled my face and rippled across my body as tepid air danced violently across my exposed skin.
My hands went to work immediately, the left compressing arcana behind me while I allowed the feelings of detachment to overcome me; the right rising to my face to bewitch needles, pins, and plates into the shattered bone while I levitated to a halt, then turned my sneer to the beast in drow form. "You are stronger than you look."
"Thank you, Matron Etyl." She snickered.
"That was not a compliment." I sneered. "Your strength is like that of a beast."
"A beast she says." Amun chortled, turning to her. "I suppose we show her our true forms now that she's trying to stall and heal?"
"You first." She said calmly.
"Very well." Amun took a deep breath and turned to meet my eyes, fueled by the white arcana leaking from his spirit. "It's my first time in this transformation, so bear with me." He said. Then, as he winked one of those abyssal eyes, the swirling platforms, the figures in the distance, the shapes in my peripherals, and the signatures I detected around me, all ground to an eerie halt. Even me. Almost.
Bolstered as I was, my agility and dexterity was on par with the Elven Devil's, who only recently attained such prowess. Under the influence of this temporal distortion, it was just enough to form my escape; even as I looked into the void.
Emitting silent curses, I moved my scimitars toward my thighs while I was forced to witness the gilded flames of the faerie immolate his robes, revealing the dark tree of legend sprawled his chest like an eldritch tattoo, for they rippled across his skin in the eeriest way.
Those black branches spread beneath his arms to drape his back in a coattail'd shroud of darkness. They writhed around his shoulders before falling down his arms and legs to form webs between long, white-bladed claws in place of his fingers and toes. The crown of that void tree ceased just beneath his jaw, yet crept around his skull to form black ridges on his crown, set behind the abyssal, white-lined horns above his brow.
Though I saw it before, the implications of this form were now realized by the both of us. And so, with a newfound vigor, I sought to slam my forged blade against my knee while my body prepared to lunge at this accursed fiend, this Devil of the Fae, smirking at me until the moment I nullified his temporal effect and was left standing, staring into a bestial eye of midnight colors.
"Now witness the glory of the Exalted Gloom!"
I pushed against the arcana with those words, shoving me through the air in a tactical retreat while I scanned the air for the other matrons. Yet, before I could get a proper count, that accursed darkness billowed like smoke, forcing my eyes upon the sole observable point in the chamber's center, set between this impenetrable darkness and the sickening sense of malevolence.
A familiar headdress came hurtling from that gloom, seeming to silence the realms themselves as it tattered against the ground before Amun, opening the most putrid sense of foreboding with the shadow that consumed it. The spread made the darkness waver - quiver and ripple like the air above a brazier, clearing up just enough to make out the bestial drow's figure as it… changed.
Her height grew thrice, starting with the arms, which bulged into clawed hands as she doubled over, giving me a clear view of the iconic horns spiraling from the top of her brow, and the slightly smaller gilded horns spiraling behind them. Then came the webbed line of short spines sprouting up to bisect them before they ran down her back to the snaking tail lashing furiously as magnificent midnight wings spread from her back, blowing apart the darkness just as a bloodcurdling roar shook the cavern to its core, and the realms responded to her call.
I felt honored, witnessing the opening stages of this eternal war and the unaltered form of our most powerful enemy, heralded by a script of arcana suspended below a dragon of pure darkness, staring at me with star-speckled eyes of malice.
[Divine Dragon of Darkness: Cononthoth, the Exalted Gloom.]