Echoes of Power, Part XIX: The Curse
As Morvaethe set loose some of his prized locales in a bid to recapture some of his raw power, Tala Mossflower did not sit idly by. Instead, the witch performed numerous scrying spells and curses to prepare for the confrontation she had been alerted to, her archaic sorcery employed in myriad ways. After sacrificing a serpent, totem spirit of those patient planners who opened wide their jaws at the right moment, the elderly Seyda scrawled runes of elder magic across the table left to her by Edhain de Verdigris and the Sentinel Pride and uttered incomprehensible incantations that sealed the glyphwork into the table’s surface with the help of her claws.
Those adventurers who came to investigate the process found themselves held as audience – enraptured, unnerved, concerned, or otherwise – to her mysterious work, her body slack as she communed with unknown forces and used the table’s surface in lieu of a scroll to bear her complex enchantments. Ignoring the questions and even brutal violence going on around her, Granny Mossflower worked with a pace that matched her long years – slow, methodical, utterly confident in her grasp of forces occult and savage. She fashioned the beginnings of a wax effigy depicting the Curator and claimed a powerful curse now rested within it, leading many to believe that the witch intended to destroy the ancient arcanist herself. As she took a break to doze ‘neath the watchful eye of Eaku Redwood, the witch’s final thoughts were of her people, safekept in the shelter of her vengeful claws.
Later that week, Dadi and Sulu, the Impish ascendants in Itensu’s employ, were seen exiting the witch’s abode with the table hoisted over their heads, and their eager noise drew curious adventurers to the Bloodwood, where the table was left facing the barely visible fissure that once lead into Morvaethe’s sanctum. Those perceptive and patient enough to remain in the furniture’s presence noticed tendrils of green light seeping forth from its sanguine runes, and those protrusions were swift to take up the infinitude of arms left behind to honour the fallen Dwarves of Kazhuram. Soon, the city-states of Sapience called for warriors and smiths alike to band together and leave more gifts for the table’s enigmatic purpose, though many were sceptical until they happened to behold its magics with their own eyes. Dirks, spears, glaives, swords, axes, maces – all were given unto the furniture as if it were a nascent god of war yearning for honour and offerings both, its divine soul made a vessel for the realm’s hatred of the Curator they now sought to thwart. Meanwhile, Old Witch Mossflower was nowhere to be found, leading many to wonder how she would exact revenge upon the old sorcerer if she did not arrive at the appointed hour. As the morning turned to afternoon, however, Sapience discovered the trail of her exploits: alongside the sun’s passage did she make mortal sacrifices in exchange for power to prepare some unknown spell, and many ascendants took her silence as an omen of her fury.
When the world had gathered together to stand beside the enchanted furniture in solidarity, Tala Mossflower arrived through a verdant gateway, flush with power and determined to set things right. Soon, the Monochromatic Sphinx and the Indomitable Burt swooped down from high in the skies and took a moment to rally the troops, with the Living Landmark insisting that the hour was nigh. As if reality took her words as a spoken decree, the realm felt the final death rattle of the Tree of Stasis, the ancient once-Dryad that had served as the focal point for profane rites and savage miracles for thousands of years. The wild things of the world mourned the tree’s passage, the woodlands and dales adopting a solemn hush as if in honour of her beloved memory, and what remained of the landmark’s power became as so much dust upon the winds of time. As if encouraged by the wailing misery Morvaethe soon issued to Sapience entire, Old Witch Tala commanded her enchanted table to get to work.
In a frenzy of motion, the table’s spectral protrusions multiplied unto infinity and seized upon every weapon bestowed upon it with all the zeal of a true believer. Revealing itself to be anything but a mundane piece of furniture, the enchanted object began to batter away at the shields barricading the Curator’s sanctum from the outside world as if it were an army laying siege to the front gates of an enemy keep. Thudding clamour echoed across the realm as the table threw itself into its grim work, desperate to please its maker and serve the purpose invested within it. Though Morvaethe’s protections proved vexatious at first, the Old Witch steadied herself with a hand upon the Monochromatic Sphinx’s flanks – an innocuous thing that nonetheless drew alarm from the Living Landmark – and began to concentrate on aiding her temporary familiar, her superior magics laying bare the pathway leading into the sorcerer’s crumbling pocket realm.
Unwilling to let Sapience’s finest raid his museum and sully its beauty, Morvaethe cried out for his conjured guardians to dispatch the invaders. Though he made loud demands of the shade shaped like a durdalis, the magical construct remained true to its lazy nature and did little more than block the way across the bridge to the deepest parts of the Curator’s sanctum. Enchantress Mossflower asked those ascendants who had come to help her put a stop to Morvaethe to direct their efforts instead towards holding off his defenders. She informed those gathered that she would work on waking the durdalis up – a task she resorted to very mundane, elderly means, such as calling the creature lazy and demanding that it move its lazy bones or else suffer swats from her walking stick, to achieve.
As adventurers vanquished Morvaethe’s most prized menagerie subjects, the durdalis would stir in its sleep and roll over, allowing further passage as the battle’s commotion roused it from its slumber. The first to fall was a colossal cetacean’s shade, its Kal Kelerii nature covering the field in roaring storms and hurricane-force winds. Upon defeat, the shade’s captive energies rebounded into the original beast’s exhibit, freeing the true cetacean to Sapience’s open skies upon the back of a torrential downpour. Without warning, the Shekoo’s shade sprang into action and began to unleash a rain of brutal, shadowy blows upon those who stood before it, even going so far as to drag Jakarn Aresti out of the Curator’s sanctum to isolate him and end his life – a plan that did not succeed, for the rest of the raiding party soon leapt to his aid and vanquished the shadowy fiend. As the original Shekoo, shadowbound and terrible, broke free of its confines to seek a true rematch, however, the Monochromatic Sphinx cried out and charged headlong at the strange Albedi creature woven into Seydan folklore and bodyslammed it through a portal she conjured, sending it elsewhere for the sake of the realm’s safety. Upon arrival at a new battlefield, the forgotten brute of Ohlsana delivered torment upon unsuspecting Vorostran armies and the berserk rakshasa that now stood before it. Inexhaustible, inexorable, the raging creature reduced all challengers to a pulp with its unstoppable strength. The beastman rendered them little more than gory offerings to Fundamental Dark and set forth on a rampage across the Saviranda Badlands until it met the edge of the Demon Blade, revealing Varach Scolrys’ current location to all who beheld the vision of the Shekoo’s demise.
Hot on the Shekoo’s heels, the shady simulacrum of Effulgent Minirima surged forward, leaving no time to grapple with those developments surrounding the shadowbound Shekoo. Blazing walls of fire and burning swathes of land could do nothing to hold Sapience’s finest at bay, and soon the Djinn’s shade was extinguished, allowing the true Minirima to break free. Incandescent in her sanctified fury, the legendary pyromancer laid waste to large swathes of the Curator’s demesne with her heretofore unseen mastery of fire magic, its sheer intensity obliterating the enchantments holding the domain’s exhibits together. Though Morvaethe deployed his precious Menedu to turn the tide, Minirima obliterated their shades without a care, her pitiless gaze a mirror of Fundamental Light and Her Accordant champion. As she departed, the Djinn liberated the Menedu from the sorcerer’s grasp, setting the wild people free into the realm as she stepped through a gateway bound for Paimri fio Oihia, ready to conduct the Light’s cleansing vengeance once more. Dumbfounded by the cataclysmic damage inflicted by the freed Djinn, the Curator issued a command to his loyal guardwyrm shade, who proved itself equally incapable of holding the angered crowd of ascendants at bay.
As the true guardwyrm of Kazhuram broke free of its exhibit and escaped into greater Sapience, Morvaethe made it clear he would not be bested again. Spiralling into the depths of manic terror, the man set loose a shade of his precious kraken, who swept the raiding party into the pocket realm that served as its habitat. At first, the adventurers caught in its tidal wrath became naught but pitiful morsels to stuff within its endless maw, and its clever ruses spelt the doom of those brave enough to engage it at the heart of its realm, calling for different tactics to instrument its downfall. Soon, Sapience’s gathered forces united and adjusted to the ebb and flow of battle, ensuring the downfall of Morvaethe’s penultimate guardian after a pitched battle upon the raging waters of a captured lake. Cajoled by Morvaethe and Tala alike, the colossal durdalis shade awoke to a sodden army ready to destroy it and, rather than do battle, lumbered away to the tune of the old wizard’s fury, its sheer defiance coming to the fore as the Curator’s power waned. Desperate for any chance at victory, the villainous collector unmade the stubborn shade and reclaimed the power that made it real before retreating deeper into his domain.
With the way clear, Old Witch Mossflower and the Sphinx led the way to Morvaethe’s last refuge, where the cowardly wizard had constructed a shield to hold the angry mob at bay. From behind his rapidly failing protections, the Curator spat curses, insults, and desperate pleas for mercy even as he positioned himself nearer to the Living Landmark, who looked ready to swallow the man whole as a show of her burgeoning impatience. Several adventurers took a position closer to the Sphinx in preparation to stop the sorcerer’s final gambit, though the Seydan witch staring him down looked unconcerned with whatever it was the man planned. True to the guess of many, the Curator soon leapt forward to sink his knife into the Monochromatic Sphinx’s hide, drawing her magical blood in a desperate bid to reclaim his might.
As he turned to the crowd with triumph in his eyes, however, his desperate gambit went awry.
The Monochromatic Sphinx, once sepian, adopted a verdant hue as the power of her blood wept forth, its potential already claimed via a casual touch by Tala Mossflower hours prior. Seizing upon her opportunity, the elderly Seyda began her vengeful work in earnest, her raw fury compelling Morvaethe to issue a scream of terror heard throughout the realm – his final act before his signature stasis sorcery swept through his body. Holding her waxen effigy on high, Tala adjusted its features and then compressed it into a cube, sealing the man’s frozen fate in a mysterious display of her ancient magics. Horrible witchlight blossomed between her claws as the elderly enchantress explained her motives, its arcane heat bidding the accursed puppet to begin melting in her grasp, its ravages a mirror to her rage.
“But we are not yet done, o Curator. You have wronged Kazhuram and Snowcloak! Ixetal! The last Menedu! Vospolek! Kithzrek! They shall all have revenge, for there is no justice in a world where you ever gained power,” the old witch declared, the very weight of her pronouncement bidding the air to quiver with sorcerous power. The light in her hands intensified, and the colours of the figurine sloughed away like warped rivers. “My people are husks, traumatised by you – and that suffering must be undone!”
It was then that amber light flared to life within the despondent village of Vimuna – first one, then another, then countless more as some unknown force swept their collective psyche into its embrace. As one, these points of brilliance aligned to create a solid stream that flowed towards the southeastern Bloodwood, through the portal torn open within its vast breadth, and then to a wax figurine held in the old witch’s claws. “They shall shed these memories to soak the earth of your mind as would the gift of all seasons bless a realm. They belong there now in the soil of your thoughts, where they shall weave their unseen meanings,” the enchantress pronounced, her voice low as she commanded the ritual powers of the Monochromatic Sphinx. “Countless tragedies to keep you company as you behold a world you cannot touch… a mountain of misery that only the winds of time can erode.”
As Tala Mossflower worked her magic, phantom imagery played out betwixt her and the captive wizard in her clutches – the contents of countless Seydan minds, extracted to relieve them of their pain and transferred to Morvaethe’s recollection in recompense. Adventurers present caught glimpses of their thousandfold terrors and aeonic anxiety, the madness of their captivity distilled until it was but a wretched stream of negativity that burrowed within Morvaethe’s skull without mercy. The ancient Seydan enchantress strode through the Curator’s mindscape as if a giant, its barren lands distant below her as she left the misery of her people in her wake. Like greedy little seeds, each memory took root in the fertile soil of the wizard’s captive mind, eager to burgeon as a spiteful harvest. Countless years, countless moments, one and all captured like crystalline hail that battered the fortress that was Morvaethe’s mind. As the witch compressed the glob of wax in her claws one more time, she summarised his fate in plainer terms for the befuddled collector:
“You are the lodestone to their suffering now, Morvaethe. Pay your dues.”
With that, the enchantress banished the man to Vimuna, where her people awoke from their catatonic state, convinced they had simply endured a short, confusing nightmare. Those stolen by Morvaethe tumbled away to settle where they had once been, freeing the Aerie and Lord Sammonword’s party barge and restoring order to the world once more.
Thus were the Echoes of Power brought to quietude, leaving the world to dwell upon what secrets yet remained in those fraught chapters of history long left unstudied as the Sphinx took wing to parts unknown…
~~~~~
Summary: After a raid upon Morvaethe’s sanctum, the mad wizard was brought to justice by Tala Mossflower, Old Witch of the Wood. Sentenced to experience the Seydan people’s mental torment in their place, the Curator is now nothing more than an ugly decoration in the village of Vimuna, his mind the lodestone to their thousand-year madness.
Penned by my hand on Falsday, the 17th of Chakros, in the year 12 AC.
