Dark Jack

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

Just as Nabi started moving to assault her one-armed opponent, the ghoul started moving as well. Unarmed as it was, the ghoul's natural mode of attack was to simply rush straight at the Erashyir, meeting her during her own approach, and move to tackle her.
But even as it rushed forward, raising its left arm to grasp for her face, Nabi's saber slashed with speed and intent, cleaving into the ghoul's shoulder, cutting flesh, tendon and bone alike, severing the offending arm. The blade even continued its arc through the arm and into the rib cage, embedding itself into the torso, though this also served to lock the saber in place until it could be properly dislodged.
Following up the chop instantly with a stab, the ghoul's own momentum added to the force of her dagger. She would feel the blade find its mark, easily sinking into and through the eyeball, resulting in a splash of something wet and still warm on her hand, before piercing hilt-deep into the creature's brain. It was a grievous wound that was doubtlessly almost instantly lethal... had the creature not been a spirit that was not actually using its vessel's brain.
Ignoring the slight inconvenience of the steel embedded in its head, the rushing ghoul – now armless – finally collided with Nabi bodily. It pressed against her, its feet skidding impotently against the floor as it merely endeavored to get as close to her as possible. It opened its own mouth and started snapping its teeth, trying to lean into and bite at her with its teeth, the only weapon it had left.

Over by the eastern staircase Irah's flying bit of water darted forward, though she would notice instantly that upon getting about five meters into the hall that the magically animated fluid would start to bleed, drip and slow down as her magic was once more impeded, necessitating her pouring additional magical energy and concentrating harder to do what she had wanted. Though Irah was outside the influence of whatever disrupting aura was in effect back in the armory, the same was evidently not true for most of the hall.
Even so the water would still make its way to Lhirin and his spear-wielding adversary. The ghoul there would swat at the water with its spear as soon as it got in range – a vain effort, since the weapon merely passed right through the liquid with minimal resistance – before the tendril connected the ghoul with Lhirin's blade, creating a pathway of minimal resistance for the still-active lightning-enchantment to traverse. The electricity would obviously disrupt Irah's magic as much as the ghoul's, instantly causing her to lose control of the conducting water and making it drop and splash onto the stair, but by then it would already have served its purpose.
The ghoul jolted backward, a spasm going through its muscles as electricity coursed through it, after which it fell back onto the stairs with a clatter of armor on stone, the spear slipping from its grasp.

Irah's attempt at directing her magical senses toward the west end of the manor would have her instantly detect a large quantity of divine energy – many times greater than any of the frentits had had – on the second floor, though notably it seemed oddly still, calm and passive. She could not feel any of the expected currents of energy that would normally indicate a functioning soul experiencing thoughts and emotions. It also felt very large in terms of the area it was distributed over; larger, even, than any kind of angel she would be familiar with.
“It is still there, Deo'irah. The last angel has not moved, and it is still alone,” Kinder told her, a note of worry in her voice. “But it is harder to sense than before, and I don't feel any emotion from it anymore. I think it may have sensed me, too, and is trying to mask its presence. Be careful; though I do not sense it now, I could tell from earlier that it is not having fun like the others. All I felt from it was hate, anger and bloodthirst.”

From Downfall ReRisen

“There might be at least two. The thing to the west. Or, at the very least, it has two different kinds of units; we were ordered to fall back in either case. They stressed the importance of not letting anyone take hostages. It reads minds. Before – my first four years out of twelve – there were cyborgs. Half-human, half-machine. They fought hard, but they were already few by that point. As far as I know, they're all gone. That land is now divided between Trenians and Anderekians to the north.”
“That confirms our own intel,” Gramps declared, proving that he was still paying attention even if he was outwardly occupying himself with preparing water for tea. “Truth be told I'm relieved to hear that there haven't been any more sightings of cyborgs. Ever since what happened to Kay-Gee...”
Though Gramps trailed off on that, Kay thought she noticed a faint shiver of his elderly, if muscular, frame even with his back turned, and was taken aback by just how unusual a sight that was. Gramps was one of the most stable, reliable and most fearless people she had ever met, and seeing him shaken by something – even as subtly as he was now – spoke volumes of how fearsome that thing must have been.
It did bring up some interesting, if rather disturbing, questions regarding Gramps' thoughts on Kay herself if he found cyborgs that unnerving. There had never been any doubt that Gramps had had no part in integrating the Interface in Kay's head and that he had been furious when he had discovered what had happened, but she had never really contemplated why he had been so angry.
“Read minds...” Kay repeated Enn's words quietly, biting her lip and running her fingers along the side of the device on her skull. Part of her would have liked to meet a cyborg – someone who was, in a sense, like her – and was disappointed to hear that they were not around anymore. Another part was relieved. A third part wondered what would happen if she actually met a machine mind.

“Kay-Gee told me some things about life is here usually. At best I could have managed on my own until I ran out of bullets and a direstalker figured it out. I would be fine living as a civilian or soldier in a different faction. I wouldn't know how to begin asking questions. Besides one, anyway. I'm here - now what?”
“Now what, indeed.” Gramps turned back towards Enn and Kay and leaned against his back against the counter, arms crossed over his chest. He looked from one to the other, and Kay could have sworn it looked as if he was aging before her very eyes as the tension started fading from his posture and expression, only to be replaced with fatigue and worry. “I don't know the machines well enough to predict what they might do. They might leave us alone, or they might wipe us out as soon as they deem it to be practical. Similarly, if we tried to flee through their lands they might let us pass, or they might destroy us, based on logic we have no chance to ever understand or predict.” He shook his head ruefully. “It's too risky.”
“We can't slip past the Anderekians and Trenians, and they absolutely wouldn't let us pass when they found us,” he continued after a moment, uncrossing his arms to raise a hand and rub his his eyes. “At best we would be captured, interrogated and maybe absorbed by them. At worst they would just get rid of us.”
He sighed. “We need to go south. It's our only chance.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

The ceramic wraith's glowing orbs seemed to shift to Jordan just an instant before the creature reached him, his truncheons ready to catch it mid-leap, and for just a fraction of a second its posture seemed to change. What would be the equivalent of its shoulders seemed to just slightly sag, its hands lowered almost imperceptibly, and the light of its eyes dimmed to mere faint embers. It did not even seem to attempt to dodge the squire's attack – though all attempts at this point would have been in vain regardless – but rather almost as though it resigned itself to its fate.
Then iron met dinner plate, pottery and possibly a mug or two in the mix, and with a loud crash of shattering ceramics the once-cohesive mass that was the wraith seemed to instantly lose the magical influence holding it together. Carried onward by the inertia of the now-absent divine's leap, the shards – at least the ones not pulverized by Jordan's bludgeons – and one errant carving-fork continued onward into the hall, clattering noisily but mostly harmlessly to the floor.

The headless ghoul – clumsy for a trained warrior, but quite adept considering the handicap of its head missing – attempted to make a wide, telegraphed slash with its silver-sword, only for a real trained warrior to completely invalidate it as an opponent. With one swing of his sword Yanin both severed the ghoul's left arm and block the other's blade, and then moved in to once more introduce the spirit within the corpse to iron directly by plunging the truncheon into the open neck, straight through the green visage imitating a head. Even before reaching the ghoul's body itself, the reaction to the truncheon would be immediately obvious as the misty faux-head seemed almost as though it detonated on contact, the ethereal oval seeming to unravel and scatter and the eyes extinguishing, fundamentally incapable of maintaining structure in the same space as the metal.
A wet noise could be head as the weapon impacted, and the body – letting the silver-sword slip from its nerveless fingers – collapsed on the spot like a puppet having its strings cut.

While the western side of the hall now seemed to be all clear with the exception of the one-armed, weaponless ghoul currently engaged with Nabi, Lhirin stepped past the now-motionless body of the ghoul that had been stabbed by Freagon and went to finish off the last opponent on the eastern side of the hall. The deigan half-breed climbed the stairs to the ghoul up there – who had been clawing at its chest halfway up the staircase – while activating the Lightning-rune on his rune sword, feeding the magic only a little magical energy. He correctly assessed that an electric attack with magic would require significantly less energy if he were to touch his opponent with the source of the lightning.
Despite this being true, Lhirin also incorrectly assessed that the ghoul – which had indeed been distracted by the needle in its spine enough to let the other move ahead alone while it stayed in the relative safety up the stairs – was sufficiently distracted or disabled to continue to ignore him even as he climbed toward it. The moment Lhirin started up the steps toward it the ghoul ceased clawing pointlessly at the front of its armor and, with a hissing exhalation through gritted teeth, instead gripped its spear with both hand and jabbed it at him, not moving forward enough to actually stab the deigan, but at the very least preventing him from advancing up the stairs. With the reach-disparity between the ghoul's spear and Lhirin's rune sword, there was no way he would be able to touch it directly and deliver his magical payload.

Below the eastern staircase Freagon moved back around to the foot of the steps, behind Lhirin, at what seemed like an almost leisurely pace that stood in stark contrast to the blinding speed at which he had moved just a couple of seconds ago. He planted one boot heavily on the back of the one-legged ghoul he had dismembered and impaled and, switching to holding his sword low in his right hand, seemed to just watch what everyone else was doing.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

Rather than worrying about the clumsy, stumbling swipe of the headless ghoul, Yanin smashed his truncheon into the divine-possessed corpse's back and knocked it even more off-balance than it had already been. It also rewarded him with the sound of yielding flesh, snapping bone and a loud, gurgling exhalation from the severed and exposed windpipe of the creature, though it did also ensure that what would have been a couple of seconds worth of recovery turned into several as it was sent scrambling on its hands and knees.
Where its head had previously been, the greenish mist that flowed from the brutalized flesh of its open neck assumed a vaguely oval, ephemeral and shifting shape as two orange-yellow motes alighted within the smoky material, instantly aligning to stare at Yanin behind it. Ignoring the damage it had taken – even its presumably broken spine – the ghoul would quickly get back to its feet and turn back to its opponent, silver-sword still in hand. It moved with a limp only until the moment when Lhirin recalled his needles, which also removed the offending iron splinter from this ghoul and restored the full use of its leg.

While that ghoul struggled to cope with the consequences of its actions, the one that had been descending the stairs chopped down with its sword, only to find its blade blocked by Yanin's truncheon and its right arm severed by Yanin's sword. Even as Yanin retreated – placing himself now between the literally disarmed ghoul and the headless but still armed one behind him – the ghoul on the stair incredulously followed its arm and sword made through the air. The silver blade clattered noisily on the stone floor as it landed only several steps from where Lhirin was standing, prompting a groan of frustration and disappointment from the creature. Looking much less enthused than before – in fact its expression almost seemed downright sullen – the ghoul halfheartedly started moving to the bottom of the stairs.

Right behind the ghoul on the stairs the blanket wraith came to a halt as Yanin entered its range, raising up like a cobra preparing to strike, revealing another pair of orange-yellow lights on the underside of its central bit of cloth. To its right, the wraith raised a separate blanket that had been pulled into and included in the construct of its vessel. But whereas most of its vessel was made up of loose and flowing pieces of fabric, this arm-blanket was rolled up tightly, turning soft cloth into a hard, long and hefty improvised club.

But just as the blanket wraith and the one-armed ghoul finished their descent to the floor of the hall, Nabi finished her incantation. A relatively narrow cone of flame spilled from the palm of her hand, shooting forth rapidly across the short distance that remained between her and them. The ghoul seemed to spot her tracing patterns, muttering words of spellcasting and thrusting her hand toward them in the last second and, with the table she had targeted last time still crackling as flames rose off it in plain view, dodged to his left.
Even so Nabi's flame still managed to catch a little bit of the ghoul's already diminished right side. Though part of his clothes were moist with blood from his arm having just been cut off, he still came away singed and with some small flames clinging to his right shoulder, left fist raised in a rather pathetic combat-ready stance.
The blanket wraith was not as fortunate and received a direct hit from the fiery blast, causing the entire thing to recoil and sprawl onto the steps. Several towels and blankets quickly detached as the cohesion of the vessel almost instantly seemed to fail, seemingly greatly weakened by Nabi's magic, until the remains of the wraith went still. All that was left was several scattered bits of blankets, sheets and towels on and around the western staircase, as well as a blackened wooden banister that had been caught in the jet of flame.

Behind her, the ceramic wraith finished migrating shards to reform its right arm – though now cleaverless – and seemed to only hesitate for a moment, uncertain how to respond to its improvised ranged attack being so effortlessly foiled, until it spotted Nabi turning her attention away from it. Its eye-lights flared brighter as it abruptly sent into something like a feral leap through the air, ignoring Jordan and moving instead to deliver a flying thrust of its carving-fork-adorned left arm.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

The sound of creaking ceramics intensified after the the shard wraith lost its right arm and primary weapon, its entire form seeming to vibrate in place, only for the noise to culminate in a series of loud snapping sounds of breaking pottery as it seemed to spontaneously overcome its paralysis just before Jordan's second blow would have found its mark. The wraith seemed to abruptly jerk backwards and out of range of Jordan and Nabi's weapons at immense speed; such speed, in fact, that the wraith seemed to completely lose control of itself, stumbling across the floor on legs that bent and twisted as its “feet” - also made of ceramic shards – clacked and screeched against the stone floor, unable to find a foothold. It practically skated about eight meters backwards until its back slammed into the wall, producing another loud rattling noise, before it finally seemed to regain control of itself.
Rather than trying to close the distance, however, the wraith – seemingly acknowledging the threat presented by Jordan's iron armaments – kept its back to the wall and glared at the two for a second. An attentive observer might have noticed ceramic shards migrating from the “torso” of its form into its diminished right arm, rebuilding it to restore its reach. But rather than stand idle as it did so, the wraith lashed out in a horizontal slashing motion with its left arm, cutting the air with its carving-fork even though neither of its opponents would be in range.
But rather than a pointless slash at nothing, as it might have seemed, the swing served to propel a collection of three sharp dinner plate-shards outward like small vaguely disc-shaped missiles; one aimed at Nabi's torso, and two at Jordan.

Just several meters from there, by the western staircase, Yanin had no issue simply sidestepping the leaping ghoul's attack, while simultaneously meeting the falling creature's head with a blow of his truncheon. The result was quite what one would expect, as the ghoul's head was practically torn off its body and partially splattered against the steps behind it, even as its feet found the floor a second later and its silver sword struck the stone floor with a loud clang. The ghoul stumbled for a couple of seconds, trying to find its footing, but nevertheless performed a reflexive one-handed swipe of its sword in Yanin's direction.
A faint greenish mist exuded from the wound where the ghoul's head had once been attached.
Just a couple of meters further up the staircase the second silver-sword wielding ghoul came rushing in to join the first, sword held high and a big grin on its bloodstained lips. Almost immediately behind it came the weird visage of the carpet wraith, continuing its awkward tumble down the stairs.

Just a few meters from Yanin and his now-headless ghoul, Lhirin retrieved all but one of his iron needles, only to use the last vestiges of the Magnetic Field-spell to propel a single iron needle along a complex route, only for it to burrow itself deeply into one of the ghouls. The creature seemed momentarily stunned at contact and stumbled back a step, only for it to let out a frustrated growl as it raised its left hand and clawed angrily at its own chest, gauntleted fingers scraping uselessly against the chainmail. Though neither the damage the corpse had taken nor the needle that was now partially embedded in its spine seemed to bother the divine puppeteering it at the moment, it still seemed that the presence of iron caused it enough discomfort to at least distract it for a few seconds.
Ignoring his inconvenienced comrade, the second ghoul on the eastern stairway continued its descent, gripping the handle of its flanged mace tightly as it glared at Lhirin menacingly... Only for its eyes to abruptly widen in surprise as it, at almost the same time as Lhirin himself would have noticed it, spotted a blurred form clad in purple and gold moving past in a rapid dash as Freagon rushed in to join the fray.
Moving incredibly fast, the old nightwalker reached the bottom of the stairway when the ghoul was just five steps from the bottom and, still wielding his sword with both hands, delivered a diagonal strike from high right to low left that instantly and cleanly severed the ghoul's left leg at the knee. Freagon kept moving forward as he half-turned counter-clockwise and, repositioning his sword, fluently thrust his sartal blade at a steep upward angle.
The narrow tip of Roct met the ghoul's sternum just as it was starting to fall over from losing its leg. With the combined force of Freagon's strength and the momentum of the ghoul's fall, the blade pieced both hauberk, gambeson, flesh and bone until one could easily tell from the deformation of the chainmail on the back that the creature had been run all the way through.
Without pause or missing a step, Freagon then completed his turn to fully about-face, the movement naturally aiding in retrieving his sword, only for him to continue past and off to the right of the staircase. He turned back toward the foot of the stair, almost facing Lhirin at this angle, even as the spear-wielding ghoul tumbled down the last few steps and fell face-first to the floor. The knight's sword was at the ready in front of him, its blade now clad in a fresh coat of blood, as his one-eyed black stare seemed fixed on the area in front of him.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

Though he did not examine the painting in the hall closely at the moment, even glancing at it enough to acknowledge its presence, size and potential as a threat would be enough for Yanin to get a general sense of what it was depicting. It was a remarkably lifelike representation of an enormous apelike creature, covered in long, thick, coarse brown fur and with a body that seemed to bulge obscenely with disturbingly exaggerated muscles, captured mid-fight against a scattered group of much, much smaller humanoids. Though it was difficult to determine the exact scale of the painting, the prooga – which is what Yanin might recognize the creature as, albeit obviously deform compared to how their kind normally looked – was shown to be easily seven times as tall as the tallest of the surrounding humanoids.
Looking at the chandelier, Yanin might be able to determine that while the ornament itself was brass and thus possibly a suitable vessel for a wraith, the sturdy chain-links that held it aloft by connecting all the way up to the ceiling appeared to be iron. Not only would a wraith not be able to possess the chain, but it would have great difficulty breaking free from it. The chandelier was also not the huge and ostentatious kind, looking to have a maximum capacity of eight candles, limbs that were only some thirty centimeters long; the whole thing looked to weigh less than ten kilograms.

Nabi responded to the advance of the ceramic wraith's by retreating toward the center of the room, staying out of reach of the ungainly construct as its presented its sharp instruments threateningly in her direction. Before she could be pushed back far enough to potentially either get caught up in one of the other fights herself or accidentally get someone else tangled up in the fight against her opponent, however, Jordan rushed in from his place in the armory to assist her.
Jordan swung a truncheon, aiming at the wraith's cleaver, but even as he approached the creature's glowing eyes turned to him as it ceased its advance toward its initial target. It seemed to begin to draw back in an attempt to evade the young man's attack, only to suddenly freeze in place and start vibrating in place while giving off a loud noise of creaking, straining ceramic. It was an easy target; Jordan's blow hit the cleaver directly, knocking it to the floor and shattering several of the pottery shards toward the end of that arm, all while the wraith appeared momentarily paralyzed, its glowing eyes darting back and forth in what might have seemed like confusion or panic, even as Nabi moved in to reengage and help in the fight.

Freagon, meanwhile, simply stared at the table wraith posturing at him like an angry bull with a blank expression, keeping his sword grasped with both hands and ready for combat. The table rushed at him like a battering ram, but the old nightwalker evaded it with a casual-looking step to the side, causing the table to run straight past him...

Or rather, the table would have run past Freagon, had this not been the moment that Lhirin finished his preparations for another activation of Magnetic Field, and iron needles suddenly darted in and embedded itself in the hind legs of the wraith, causing it to immediately stumble, fall over and noisily clatter to the floor on its side. Freagon afforded the deigan half-breed a brief, ambiguous glance before he rushed toward the table, moving his sword up and to the right as he went, only to deliver a swift diagonal strike to it, cleaving straight through one of its legs and halfway through the tabletop itself.
The table twitched again, and the Knight of the Will instantly swing left to right, rending a second large gash all the way through the wooden vessel parallel to the first, after which the table remained still.

Another barrage of iron needles fell on the blanket wraith from above as it was flopping its way down the stairs, slamming into it with a rapid series of dull thuds and pinning it to the steps. Unfortunately it did not seem that the needles themselves were enough to destroy the wraith, however, and though it was indeed momentarily forced down and held in place, needles – effectively headless nails in this scenario – proved quite inadequate fasteners, as the lack of a head meant that there was nothing stopping the wraith from merely pulling itself off the small missiles, at once rising back off the floor and leaving behind the disruptive iron objects as it continued its trek toward the floor of the hall.
Another four needles went for the legs of the ghouls, embedding themselves in one calf per creature, prompting all for to halt for a second just before they would have reached the bottom of the stairs. Two of them merely growled in wordless frustration while one of the possessed witch-hunters muttered a curse under its breath.
One of the witch-hunter ghouls then leaped off the stairs, silver-sword raised high over its head as it let out a shrill, coarse battle cry as it went to deliver a huge, but extremely telegraphed downward slash toward Yanin. The other witch-hunter went down on one knee, grabbed the offending iron needle in his calf, and unceremoniously pulled it back out.

The last two ghouls seemed to hesitate for but a moment, watching their silver-sword wielding allies for a second or two before both of them knelt as well and simply removed the needles. Then they both ran the rest of the way down, heading straight for Lhirin, weapons poised to strike.
Lhirin would notice that Yanin was to his left, dealing with his own fight, and Freagon had just seemingly finished his opponent right behind him.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

Freagon did not hesitate when Lhirin told him to withdraw, but instantly released the divine wearing the witch-hunter's flesh and jumped backward, changing his stance mid-jump to seize his weapon with both hands. Way back in the armory, still standing guard by Irah, Jaelnec let out a shriek of pain, threw both of his hands up to cover his eyes and turned from the doorway as the bolt of lightning struck the ghoul, filling the hall with searing light; light which was fundamentally anathema to nightwalker eyes.
In the hall itself, standing but a couple of meters from it, Freagon did not even blink nor flinch. His one eye kept staring at his opponent expectantly, his blade prepared to finish the job if Lhirin's spell proved insufficient.

It very quickly became clear that his wariness was unnecessary, though, as the once-ghoul instantly collapsed on the floor as soon as there was no longer electricity keeping it standing. He glanced behind him and to his left, where Lhirin stood amidst the now-inert rug. Then past him and toward the left staircase of the hall, where Nabi was just ceasing the blaze she had conjured against the table-wraith, but the disappearance of magical fire only revealed the real fire that was currently engulfing the piece of furniture... which was no longer moving. If that wraith was still active, it seemed content to just stand there and let the fire consume it.

For a second the silence was almost deafening in the wake of this short burst of combat, with the only sound being everyone breathing and the crackling of the flames, but Freagon did not relax his stance.

Then, suddenly, several of things happened all at once.
To their left, in the west-end of the hall, one half of the massive four meter-wide double door swung open as another unnatural abomination moved into the hall: a 150 cm tall construct made up entirely of what appeared to be shards of dinner plates and pottery in various colors, making up a frame that loosely resembled a humanoid shape with arms, legs and a small head. All the different ceramics creaked, clattered and cracked as it moved, a pair of orange-yellow eyes alight on what would be considered its face, and it raised its arms in front of it as if preparing for a fight. On the end of its right arm – either held by it or as part of its actual vessel – it brandished a hefty meat cleaver. On the end of its left arm was a carving fork.
To their right, in the east-end of the hall, a smaller door burst open but a second after the first, allowing another table to enter, only this one was much larger, perhaps closer to what one would consider a dinner table whereas the the currently burning one looked more like a bedside- or coffee table. This one had not commandeered any additional furniture either, but merely crashed in as just a table, moving on all four legs in an aggressive stance, like a bull ready to charge.
Finally, up above on the landing that lined upper floor of the hall, four human figures rushed in from the west end – each with different and somewhat obvious signs of probably lethal injury – and moved to stand at the top of the two staircases, glaring down at the people gathered at the bottom of the hall. The two on the left wielded silver swords, but did not wear the armor that the first had, whereas the two on the right wielded a flanged mace and a spear, respectively, and both wore chainmail over gambesons.
Accompanying what was in all likelihood ghouls on the landing was another wraith, though this one seemed much less intimidating than the ones on the lower floor, as it seemed to be made up of sheets and blankets and was just flopping awkwardly over the floor, moving to the top of the left staircase along with the silver-sword wielding ghouls.

The pottery-wraith moved to attack Nabi, who was closest to it. The second table-wraith went to rush at Freagon. And all the creatures upstairs started running down them, the faces of the ghouls in particular being twisted into expressions of mad delight at the bloodshed they expected to be about to partake in.

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

The twenty remaining iron needles pierced the rug with ease, but while Lhirin would feel its death-grip on him loosen to the point where it no longer threatened to crush him, it did not seem as though it was enough to dissuade it from keeping him in place and blinded. The cloth writhed and twisted around him, rubbing the somewhat coarse woven fabric against him. The thick cloth even muffled sound from outside it quite significantly; while it was no longer immediately dangerous on its own, this rug-wraith was quite well-suited for immobilization and sensory deprivation.

It was Jordan, it turned out, who claimed the final blow to the greatly weakened water-wraith with a decisive downward strike of his truncheon. While water had definite advantages for a creature such as this in its malleability and indestructibility in terms of normal threats, a loose medium such as water was also incredibly easy to lose control over as their magic was disrupted, making them easy to destroy.
The creature stared at Jordan as he approached with glowing orange-yellow eyes from within the liquid and made a weak attempt at evading his attack, but it was too difficult to move with the iron truncheon still inside it. The bludgeon hit with a splash and the wraith burst like a bubble, spilling the water that had made its makeshift vessel over even more of the floor as its spirit lost its tether to Reniam and was forcefully returned to whichever divine realm it had come from.

Yanin looked at the hall intently, but the room was surprisingly bare for such a large open area. The only things he could see present there that had not already proven to be a wraith was the chandelier above and the large painting in the far back.

Jaelnec had been waiting nervously beside his master and Irah, currently waiting for orders or for circumstances to force him to act as he had been instructed, but Freagon seemed content to simply watch the others fighting the wraiths for the time being. Though Jaelnec had gotten better at catching the subtle signs of the knight's moods over the one-and-a-half decade they had spent together, even he had very little idea what was actually going on in the older nightwalker's mind. All he really knew was that Freagon was staring very intensely at the scene before them, sword in hand and ready to act, yet seemingly waiting for... something?
When Madara entered the armory, approached them and addressed them with a brief bit of information, it was only the younger nightwalker that actually turned to look at her. Freagon kept his single eye firmly fixed on the door to the hall and the events playing out over there.
Even so it was still Freagon who responded first: “Thanks,” he simply told her, a small smile curving the corners of his mouth as Jordan crushed the water-wraith in the doorway. Then his eye abruptly widened, his body tensed for a split-second, and out of nowhere he dashed toward the door with a speed that would have been impressive for a person in regular clothing, but was made all the more so by the fact that he was moving that fast in full combat gear.

Freagon sprinted straight past Yanin and Jordan and entered the hall in a heartbeat, his sword held in one hand out to the side as he moved to pass the trapped Lhirin on his right. There was a flash of metal, his sword moving with blinding speed to his left as he drew its eternally razor-sharp edge nimbly and precisely to carve through the rug at about shoulder-level of the captured deigan, cutting all the way through without the sword as much as touching the person inside.

Lhirin would suddenly feel the entire right side of the rug go limp and light flowing into the darkness as a slit opened up over there. The grip of the rug seemed to loosen even more, almost to the point of falling off on its own. It would not be difficult to free himself anymore.

But Freagon kept moving without pause or hesitation, stepping past Lhirin's form and toward the approaching warrior just as this strange iron-clad man, his expression twisting into a grimace of annoyance, raised his silver-sword to strike. He was slow and clumsy; there was another flash of metal as Roct darted from Freagon's left side and upward, clashing with the other's blade hard enough to knock the sword out of his hand, sending it clattering loudly across the floor.
Continuing to move with dexterity and alacrity, Freagon's right hand and sword moved down behind the witch-hunter's shield, only for him to tear it off the man's broken arm and fling it, too, to the floor. The knight's left hand darted for the stranger's right arm and seized his wrist, holding him in place.
He hesitated for a second, staring into the man's face, meeting the witch-hunter's expression of rage with one of intense scrutiny.
Then he loudly and clearly shouted just one single word: “Ghoul!”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin and Jordan, Bor Manor, Borstown

Yanin acted immediately, decisively and cautiously, rushing to Lhirin's aid and throwing his freshly acquired truncheon at the wraith hiding above the door. The hunk of iron hit the water with a splash, sending a cascade of water suddenly spilling onto the floor from the point of impact as the iron disturbed the angel's control of its vessel. only seemed to continue to inconvenience it as it seemed to suddenly struggle greatly to even maintain its shape, let alone manhandle its hostage.
But even as the wraith lost its grip on the wall and fell to the ground with a loud splash, it remained just vaguely cohesive, though it kept “bleeding” water from its from and shrinking as the iron kept weakening it.

It did manage one last act of defiance, however: as it fell, the wraith extended Lhirin just slightly into the room before releasing him, dropping him just a couple of meters beyond the doorway, directly onto the ornate rug decorating the floor in the hall. And the second the deigan half-breed touched the rug, the cloth seemed to abruptly jolt to life, jump up, fold in on itself and wrap around him tightly, wrapping him in a cocoon while squeezing him like a python.

But as soon as Lhirin disappeared inside the rug, the wounded man that had seemingly been fighting the wraiths immediately rushed toward him.

Madara, outside Bor Manor, Borstown

“More people?” The bell-ringer seemed confused as to what Madara meant. “There have been guests, of course, but otherwise it's just been Lady Bor and us. Wade and Kylie take care of the day-to-day, and Quintin, Byron and I just help out.” He winced. “Byron... didn't make it. Bandits got him. Quintin went to track the bastards, but he hasn't come back since.”
The man seemed to fall into thought for a moment when she asked if he knew anything that might help. “I don't know if this is important,” he said hesitantly, “but I saw the summoner drink a vial of something while she was running up stairs. I think it might have been piaan.”

The Prophecy - Dreams of Destiny

Jaelnec, Freagon, Irah, Lhirin, Nabi, Yanin, Jordan and Madara, Bor Manor, Borstown

As everyone started filtering into the armory and short conversations were being had here and there, Freagon started marching straight through without caring, only to then slow his stride and glance toward Yanin and Jordan getting some iron weapons from one of the racks. Finally, when he was just a couple of short steps from reaching and opening the door that would lead into the hall, Freagon stopped entirely and turned around.
“You take one too, boy,” he ordered Jaelnec, who was trailing several meters behind him, only to slightly raise an eyebrow as he realized that the younger nightwalker's attention seemed to be less on him and more on Irah... and that this female true deigan was looking first at his sword, and then at him, before stating her desire to hear the story of his blade.
The grizzled old knight narrowed his eye at her and his jaws worked as if chewing on some imaginary thing in his mouth. He would have ignored her and just carried on walking, had he not decided to wait a moment anyway for his page to retrieve a larger iron implement. Not that he figured Jaelnec would need it; Freagon was confident that he could destroy any divine in the manor before they reached him, and even in the event that one did reach Jaelnec, the boy had a knife and bracers of mostly pure iron specifically for situations like this. But it was better to be safe than sorry.
Even waiting passively as he did in this moment, Freagon figured that he could easily just pretend to not understand Fermian and be entirely justified in ignoring her... but that could result in some annoying discussions later, when the others learned that he actually did speak Fermian. The girl did seem decently skilled with magic and seemed confident about her magical reserves. Her, the male deigan, Sir Yanin Glade... there was potential here. It was probably best to not needlessly antagonize any of them. Yet.
“We will see,” the old nightwalker replied noncommittally in Fermian, making a mental note to prepare himself and decide exactly how much he was going to divulge to her. It was far from the first time anyone had asked him about Roct, of course – practically every true deigan he met seemed to feel entitled to an explanation as to why he, a nightwalker, owned such a thing – and normally he told them the barest minimum. But if he really was going to try to get along with this one, slightly more than minimum might be better.

“I can feel it too,” Kinder reported in Irah's head after she had announced that something was off about her magic. “I can still feel the angels inside, but it is as though something is obscuring my senses. Be careful, Deo'irah; I cannot tell where the angels are right now.”

Jaelnec had naturally assumed a defensive position to guard Irah as soon as they moved to enter the manor and only left her long enough to obey his master's command to retrieve an iron truncheon before hurrying back to her side. He would seem concerned at the signs of her seeming unwell, but also focused, alert and tense, setting aside business that did not seem urgent for as long as he sensed that there might be danger afoot.
For a moment he held the blunt instrument in his right hand as his only weapon, shifting it back and forth a little and turning it in his grip, feeling its weight and balance, then he switched it to his left hand before reaching his right one for the hilt at his left hip. He drew his own sword in a motion that was almost an exact replication of the one Freagon had brandished his weapon with, but unlike his master, the blade that emerged from his scabbard was nothing special. A steel blade of middling quality, its surface scuffed and its edge chipped here and there, well-sharpened and -maintained as much as one could on the road, but obviously worn and getting toward the end of its lifespan.

While everyone else were making their last preparations in anticipating of having to face down summoned divines, however, Lhirin merely had to cast Magnetic Field to manipulate a host of iron needles and swung open the doors to the hall.
The barrage of needles struck the wraith's mostly-wooden body with a loud, rapid series of dull thuds and the sound of splintering wood, and a faint, ghostly voice cried out in agony as it seemed to stumble away, further into the room, only for both chairs to seemingly lose whatever semblance of cohesion they had with the table and clatter noisily to the ground. The table and candleholder was still moving, albeit obviously much slower and more awkwardly than a moment ago, but the chairs had been rendered inanimate by the injection of iron.

His eyes forward, locked on the weakened wraith in front of him, Lhirin stepped forth into the hall... only for his view of the wraith to abruptly become obscured by a mostly-transparent visage that filled his entire field of view the instant he stepped across the threshold. He would feel a warm, wet tightness envelop his head, cover his eyes and ears; suddenly, even though he stood on dry ground, Lhirin's entire head was submerged in water. The liquid instantly prevented him from breathing, only for the water pressure to swiftly increase, especially around his neck, further cutting off airflow, and then pulling up with enough strength to lift the dainty deigan's feet off the ground.
Sitting on the wall directly inside the hall and above the door Lhirin had just walked through, where it could not easily be seen from beyond the doorway, Lhirin would come face-to-face with the creature that had just ambushed him. It appeared as something that only vaguely resembled a creature in the first place, being mostly just an ever-shifting, shapeless blob of water aside from the one pseudopod that had extended to envelop his head and capture him. The only distinctive feature of it seemed to be a pair of yellowish-orange lights within the liquid, staring at him with glee.

The people behind Lhirin might see the tip of this water-pseudopod dart down from above and envelop Lhirin's head in one rapid movement, only for it to disappear upward along with Lhirin a second later with an audible squelching noise.