[center][h3]Larth’s Bane[/h3]
[i]Somewhere in the Arcosi Hinterlands[/i]
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The naked steel looked almost gilded as it flashed through the haze, glowing in the reflection of the demon’s infernal light. A wild slash of the blade sought the fiend’s torso, but the living fire and shadow twisted away with unnatural alacrity. Another reckless blow came -- this one from above, with enough strength to have cloven through a man’s collar and halfway down his chest, but the giant devil somehow shrank out of the sword’s path even as it pressed forward with careful and deliberate steps. Half-blindly backpedaling away from the horror, the choking knight found poor footing and slipped on the muddy floor.

The moment that Sir Luci fell down upon his back, Kalkoroth rushed the templar in a surge of darkness and furnace-like heat. Grasping claws pried at Luci’s armor and tried to rip through, but his steel was true. His sword flashed forward, cutting through the sooty air and singed as it arced at the demon’s claws. Kalkoroth peeled back, but Luci’s palm was so sweaty that the vice of his grip failed and the blade slid from his hand. He scrambled to snatch it back up, but the demon’s weight was suddenly upon him, and a lash of its tail flicked the blade a yard and a half away -- tauntingly near, but too far. The claws grasped at Luci’s tangle of red hair and used it to slam his head onto the floor. The other claw was searching across his body for something, probing at his chest. The world grew blurry and the sounds of distant shouting were drowned out by ringing, but instinct took over and he reached for a dagger on his belt. He plunged the thing into the bowels of the surprised demon, but when he pulled the knife free there was burning blood flowing down it like melted candlewax, and where it touched his hand he gasped and lost his grip upon that weapon, too.

More foul ichor spilled forth from the demon’s gut and rained upon Sir Luci’s chest, and even through his mail and the clothes beneath he could feel the corrupted fluid’s heat. The devil seemed to have hardly even noticed its wound, however; it was instead preoccupied with tearing the knight’s chainmail off, jerking him around like a ragdoll as he eventually came to realize that pulling it off over Luci’s head would be easier than ripping through the countless chain links.

The shouting was closer now. Two hazy figures appeared in the narrow passageway that was the mouth to the hole in the ground -- the squires! Yet the pair grew silent and quivered when they beheld the monster squatting over Luci’s writhing form, clawing as it tore away the knight’s armor. One, brave to the point of stupidity, cried out, “Paterdomus!”

He charged forth, blade high, and predictably swung it down in a mighty arc towards Kalkoroth’s horrific visage. Like lightning the demon twisted away, the sword nearly coming to land upon Luci where he still laid upon the ground, and then in the next instant the squire’s head was nearly severed by one swipe of the demon’s claws at his throat. The boy collapsed into a bleeding heap and was dead in a heartbeat, and in a cruel rasp the demon called out some unknowable taunt in its foul language, mocking or challenging the other squire. The boy predictably fled in terror. From somewhere further back in the cave, the warlock cackled at the sight amidst shuddering and shaky breaths.

Kalkoroth, however, had turned his attention back to the knight -- even then, Sir Luci was trying to fight, trying to crawl towards his sword. The devil kicked the templar over onto his belly once more, then put a foot down upon the man’s throat. The monster’s darkened form burned his skin, and yet it already radiated noticeably less heat... and the unholy glyph wrought into its chest was glowing dimmer yet. Smoke and black vapors poured out of the beast’s maw and sublimated from its form with every passing moment -- it was growing weaker and smaller.

With that revelation, Sir Luci suddenly realized why the monster hadn’t slain him already as quickly and brutally as it had just done to the squire. With renewed desperation and strength, the knight endeavored to struggle and fight as hard as he could and for as long as he could -- not for his life, which already seemed forfeit, but for his very soul. Still, there was precious little that he could do against a foe so far beyond a mortal man. His feeble writhing elicited little more than a diabolical hiss of annoyance as the demon finally pulled off his chainmail entirely and then ripped away the garments beneath to expose bare flesh.

Luci’s heart was pounding harder and faster than his head. He felt no pain, even as he [i]saw[/i] the demon’s claw tear into his skin and quickly carve a crude symbol. There was only the wet and sticky feel of his own blood; his life gushed out so fast that it hid the lines gouged upon him. But then there was an agony beyond words coursing through every part of the knight’s being, and the world itself shuddered as a single word of malice left the demon’s maw. A light then emanated from Luci’s chest, glowing through the layer of blood, pulsating in tune with his own heartbeat just as a candle’s light flickered with the motion of its flame. The glyph wrought into his skin and that in the demon’s were one and the same: the Black God’s mark.

[b][color=red]”You too are His now,”[/color][/b] Kalkoroth declared in the Black Tongue, and the magic was such that Luci now understood the monster’s tongue. Kalkoroth snarled in cruel triumph and chortled, [b][color=red]”But the master can share his minions. You will be [i]mine[/i], moreover.”[/color][/b]

The next attack was a mental one, and this time Luci managed to hold his own. He gritted his teeth and roared even as there was an unbearable heat and pounding in his head as the demon’s presence pressed against his own and tried to displace his very mind and being. Sir Luci pushed back. He thought of home, not his cold cell in Paterdomus’ depths and the halls of his order, but of the hazy and distant recollections of where he’d lived in his youth before the priests took him. Somewhere far behind him, there was a hovel resting beneath the shadow of an ancient oak. He wondered if there was stew cooking in the pot by its hearth, and if he would ever see the cottage again.

Then there was a flash and suddenly he was consumed by rage, choking on blood. A stake had been driven through his back -- no, it was a whole sword! His own fiery sword fell from his failing grip. The icy bronze lanced through the ruin of his heart and ran so deep that the dip emerged on the other side, and his innards broiled and churned. His mouth opened to gasp for air, but he swallowed only ash, the ashes of his own body as his mouth itself began to disintegrate. He twisted about and then fell to his knees into the freezing flows of the river underfoot, and a man before him gawked dumbly and wide-eyed with a shield in one hand and nothing in the other (that must have been his sword!) even as the maggot’s bodyguards shouted and pulled him back, away to the riverside. Two of the fools advanced closer with weapons raised, and even in his dying throes he flailed with tail and claw to strike them both down. A half dozen giant trolls quickly encircled him and pressed back the endless tide of humans, even as the countless orcs around saw him and began to cry out in terror and break like useless swine; somewhere nearby an ogre or two bellowed and kept on fighting as if oblivious entirely. He brought his hands to his chest, clawing at the sword even as his fiery innards melted it into nothingness, trying to pull the thing out even though he knew it was futile. Ash shed away from every bit of him and fire burst forth through shadowy flesh, and with one final roar of a death cry his entire body was consumed in a violent explosion. Then, the darkened gate.

Sir Luci experienced the sensation of falling down a darkened tunnel, endlessly tumbling downwards, as if he had been cast into a well. But the heat and stench and horrific glow that came from below told him that this was no well, and so he raged and [i]fought[/i]. He sprawled out his arms and reached to find nothing, and yet through sheer force of will his grasping hands found some purchase and he [i]climbed[/i].

A deafening voice echoed from the darkness all around. [b][color=red]”You have a darkness in you, worm. Your soul was already tainted; the wound was there, I merely exposed it. You are lost. SURRENDER.”[/color][/b]

“No,” the templar whispered.

The darkness itself recoiled as if pained, driven back by some light. But then it roared in rage and came back again, crushing Luci in its smothering grasp.

He remembered the cottage beneath the oak, the warm bed of straw on the ground where he’d slept, a woman whispered to him stories of the Exalted to lull him to sleep.

“NEVER!” Sir Luci shouted with all the strength in his lungs, and suddenly he wasn’t falling anymore. He was on the ground, his face covered in ash, a crumbling monster kneeling atop him. Then weight left his chest suddenly as Kalkoroth sprung backwards, looking to a coughing heap in the darkest recess of the cave, behind even the ruined salt circle and the smoldering pit where there’d been a portal.

[b][color=red]”OPEN TO ME, WARLOCK!”[/color][/b] the demon shouted, desperation in its voice.

The dying Hanuzeth croaked something too weak to be heard, but it didn’t matter. When the demon knelt over the orc and showed him the burning pit, Hanuzeth did not climb. The demon, who had been so mighty and terrifying only a minute before, dissolved into ash and nothingness. But then the warlock was suddenly animated with strength, scrambling to his feet in defiance of mortal wounds. The orc stood tall and straight, a blood-red fire coming from its eyes and smoke from its open wounds, and it strode forth to seize Sir Luci’s blade from where it had been abandoned on the ground.