Gwynbleidd — Roleplayer Guild

Just beyond the darkened veil of future's hold
A storm comes near bearing winter's cold
Sharpened and steeled, a frostborne bite
Hued in snow and deathly night.

- Anonymous 

1128 Titans' Rest
30th Year of the Undying's Reign
Centurion Keep, Avless
24 Hours After the Taking of Avless 
The smog of death blackened her bloodstained feathers.

Tristanya, in raven form, soared with pale wings spread above conquered Avless, the once proud city defiant behind its supposedly impenetrable walls cried with blood and fire coming from its eyes. The filth of smoky ruin billowing upwards only further covered her in the soaked uniform of murder.

She circled over a barricade formed by the city's last remnants of defense where defeated soldiers held on to a feeble thread of hope. They raised their swords and shields, and pointed their spears towards the ravaging, pillaging, and raping Anthem. The wave of murderers and killers fell on them like the covering of night, engulfing them whole. Their line broke, and screams thickened the air with the plunging of knives into wet flesh.

The city's defense was strong, and their mages were deeply skilled. But, against unholy magic and a seemingly endless army, talent proved a fickle ally. And through it all, Tristanya was here. Flying above the destruction, still alive despite the certain death that had awaited her in the tunnels beneath the walls. This was the victory of her company. This was her victory.

Blood tasted bitter on her tongue.

She turned away. The ashen haired raven changed its course, returning to the heart of Avless, returning to the keep. Her avian shadow casted her movements over the battlements, getting larger, closer, and then morphing into a hooded figure. Tristanya walked in a fluid, gliding motion, drifting past soldiers like a ghost as she made her way inside to be met again by woeful death throes wrenching any sort of happiness out of the air. 

The reek of death was pungent. Rotting flesh and shit should make a lady pale and faint but Trist coolly surveyed the scene. A soldier who recognized her came running to meet her.

"Lady Sorcerer, it's my brother, he- the physicians don't know- they aren't helping you see. They say he's gonna' die but that ain't true, he's fine I swear my life on it. Magic can save him, I said. Please-"

Trist raised her hand. She spoke gently. "Take me to him."

"You mean it? Oh, bless ye woman. You're a right savior and I'll never forget this. Come on, he's over here!" The soldier was animated in his thanks before rushing over to his brother's bedside. 

The man's brother was laying on a make-shift cot marred by rot, and blood. He was dying. From Trist's judgment, the soldier couldn't have been a boy any older than sixteen. Clean shaven, it looked like he hadn't even been able to grow a beard on his childish face. His eyelids opened weakly, and he tried to speak through dry, cracked lips.

"Water." A broken murmur. "Water..." He repeated his heart-rending request.

First, she studied the bowl by his bedside filled with water and a wet cloth inside. The water had rusted from the grime of his wounds. Trist glanced at the boy's older brother, judging by the age around his eyes.

"Do you have any water?"

His look told her all she needed to know.

"Give me a moment." Trist took the bowl and poured it out. There was plenty of blood around her to work with, and so she did, casting a spell and making a pool of clean water appear within the basin.

"That's amazing, that's a real miracle! I told them you could save him!"

Trist ignored him and found a physician's bag that was left behind. She searched its contents quickly, eventually pulling out a bag of powder. A simple tear and she poured it into the water, letting the dust mix within. Slowly, she lifted the bowl.

"Get his head for me."

The soldier did so, placing his hand beneath the boy's neck. "You're gonna' be alright, Ben, I promise. We'll get you outta' 'ere, go back home and see mom and dad. Would ya' like that?"

Gently, Trist brought the bowl to the boy's mouth, tipping it with a slight tilt until the powdered water poured into his mouth for him to swallow. "Easy now, don't choke." She continued as he took to her directions well. Enough had gone down, and Trist placed the bowl back down. She nodded to the elder brother, and he released his hold, choosing now to brush his hand through the boy's dirt-matted hair. The boy closed his eyes, falling into a deep sleep.

"What did ye do for him?"

"Charmed water, mixed with medicinal powder. He'll be asleep for a long while."

"Will he be alright?"

"Yes." Trist stood.

"Thank ye, m'lady. You don't know what ye've done for me, ye don't. May the Old Gods bring you nothing but good fortune." The soldier said to her, nearly at the brink of tears.

But she did know what she'd done. Trist turned away and made her way out of the entrance hall with quickening steps. She knew the boy was dead the moment she'd seen his wound. Blood magic could work miracles, but not the sort that belonged to the divine.

The boy named Ben would be dead in an hour.

Time had passed by, and the sounds of the city burning became a hum of white noise. Trist stared into the makeshift fire set up on the stone floor in the great hall. Others talked, and perhaps some of them talked to her, but the words never reached her.

It wasn't until Verse appeared that the sorcerer returned. Of all their strange cast, Verse was the only one there that didn't have a visible soul-aura emanating from her. Nothing. Was that what it was like for the Tainted? To have no soul? Regardless of Trist's thoughts, her sharp and quick words were welcome.

Trist rose with her staff. "Where is the killing to be done next?" She asked, feeling no reason to soften the question.

1128 Titans' Rest
30th Year of the Undying's Reign
Legion Camp
24 Hours Prior to the Taking of Avless

Her morning began as it often did: alone. Pale light kissed her naked flesh where the tent permitted, and wherever dawn’s touch was denied there was shadow that ruled. She dipped her hand into the reaching warmth with meditative thought etched on her face while she rolled her wrist and hand, fingers dancing fluidly across light and dark. It was a long time ago when she was a young girl Tristanya discovered she could not feel the sun’s warmth, or the cold of winter. Even now, years later, the sensation still eluded her. 

Outside the relatively safe confines of her tent, the white witch could hear the distant rumble of battle. Drums, swords, war chants; they all swirled together as one sadistic melody laid over the cacophonous rhythm of dying screams. Tristanya did not flinch at the sounds, nor did she even bother looking up from her contemplations. She breathed deeply before standing up. Wintery eyes met in glass reflection. Being a noblewoman retained certain luxuries even in war, and this mirror was one of them. It was, truthfully, a useless trinket. However, her feminine nature won out, preferring to have the knowledge of whether she looked utterly hideous in the aftermath of battle. 

Trist studied herself in quiet isolation. No marks marred her flesh, lightly tanned as it always was no matter the season. Her moon-touched hair fell just slightly past her shoulders, a length she'd consistently kept it maintained. Miraculous, one might say, that she had the time to do so. Never underestimate a sorcerer, and that counts doubly so for a woman sorcerer.

Exhaustion flickered in her gaze, and something else too. As quick as the emotions appeared they were snuffed out like a quarantined disease, frozen over by Trist's customary expression of imperious indifference. She steeled herself for the long day still waiting in front of her, but first there were other matters to attend to while there was still time. Trist approached another indulgence afforded by her station; a dresser. It was ebony in color, and finely crafted. Heavy too, as a few resentful soldier's might attest. The noble lady did not bring servants with her. There was no need. Convincing eager men to do her bidding wasn't a difficult task, that burden came from spurning their advances. Luckily, the threat of blood magic cools a man's baser urges quicker than an icy bath.

Tristanya opened one of its topmost drawers on the far right. Inside there laid a dagger with a curved obsidian blade stretching out from a bone-white handle. She grasped the hilt, tenderly clutching it with feather-soft fingers. Underneath the knife was a leather bound journal that Trist picked up and placed flat on the dresser's surface. She carefully opened the journal to the correct point, a hundred pages in what looked to be a five hundred page volume. There were no words written, just like there had been none on the other pages as she flipped through them. Trist parted her lips and whispered, and the sound carried unnaturally within her tent like a thousand voices murmured together. Shortly thereafter, crimson ink bled through the page and strange writing appeared. 

A deep breath. With calculated purpose, Trist placed the sharpened edge to her palm.

"Job to be done. Voice’s orders. Meet at the Weeping Gate within the Hour. Pack Light."

Trist screamed. The Red Voice burned harshly inside of her head, booming with pain that was multiplied by the deep gash on her hand. She'd cut too deep, and the bright crimson streamed over her skin, trickling onto the dresser. After a few short breaths, Trist spoke out an incantation writing the words in the air. Almost immediately the pain in both her head and hand withered from a touch of cold. Moments passed, and the sorcerer refocused. The mage swore the Voice spoke at the most inopportune times on purpose just to play with her head and because of that, her orders could wait just a little longer.

She didn't need this much blood, but it'd do nonetheless. A new series of incantations, and her blood spiraled into the air, dancing around her. Her other hand opened. Trist concentrated on her unclosed hand, never blinking, not breaking the carefully emphasized words of her spell. Then, a glowing light came into being from nonexistence. It grew.

Curious, she thought.

With each elegantly structured phrase the light grew larger, molding into a shape; a sphere. She felt something strange, something different from her usual blood magic. But, she could also feel herself growing weak as this particular spell took more from her than expected. 

No, no stopping now. She willed herself forward. What was it?

A soldier rushed through the opening of her tent, ripping the flap to the side. "My lady- oh!"

The sphere blinked out.

The soldier stuttered. "M'lady, I didn't mean to... I didn't know you were-" He acted embarrassed, appearing genuinely stunned, though the deviance in his eyes could never go unhidden.

Trist hammered her fist into the dresser in frustration. She spoke calmly, and slowly. "Did it ever occur to you, soldier, that you might want to knock first before entering?"

"We heard screams. Thought you was hurt," he explained, "there's also, uh, no door to your tent, m'lady."

She whipped her head around to look at him with a dark expression. "Oh, truly? I shall thank you for that enlightening piece of information then, soldier. Perhaps you're due for a reward, is it money you want, or maybe you desire a place in my bed like the rest of them out there. Oh no, we can do better..." Trist placed a finger on her chin in contemplation. "Ah! I've got it, an early death it shall be. What is your preferred method of death; hanging, drowning, or burning alive?"

The man trembled. "No offense was meant, Tri-"

Trist shook her head.

He paused. "M'lady. I-I apologize for offending ye."

"See now. That wasn't so difficult, was it? I advise you to keep it in mind that when I say to 'knock', I'm not being literal in meaning. Shout your approach, announce your arrival, you might even have the courtesy to clap your hands together before I permit you inside my tent. With those boots I may even command you to dance outside the entranceway. Wouldn't be hard to hear, would it, all that metal clattering around."

He held his head low. "I understand."

"Good, your life has been spared for this day, soldier." Trist turned back to the dresser, and uttered a spell that began sealing the wound on her palm. "Now, carry on."

"Might I stay to make things up to ye? I can keep a lookout, just in case."

She thought on it. "That is kind. You may, but do turn around. I have to change, it's unseemly for a stranger to see a lady unclothed for this long." Trist bent down to open another drawer.

The soldier turned around, facing the camp outside. "As you wish." Then, he turned his head, watching her intently, a smile on his face.

Trist smirked as she grabbed a black corset and began fastening it around her body. "Do you know much about blood magic, soldier?"

"No, can't say I do." He watched still, taking pleasure in the view. It was on his voice, the pleasure.

"No, I thought not." She finished tightening the strings. Next came undergarments that she slipped on over her legs. Following that came both jet black trousers and a light leather-armor jacket of the same color. "You see, soldier, a blood mage has a long list of powers."

"Yes, very long I bet."

"Quite so. One of my personal favorites is that when someone, say a man for instance, is within a certain distance of me I know what he's doing without even having looking at him."

The soldier blanched.

"Fascinating, isn't it?"

"Y-y-yes."

Trist put on the last part of her outfit, her cloak that was black as the ocean's nighttime depths with the exception of a silver edge at the cuffs by her wrists and the front of her hood. She armed herself with the dagger, and then re-bound her journal before tying it to her waist inside the cloak. "There truly are endless things one might do with the magic." She wandered to the far corner of the tent and grabbed her moon-white staff. "I'm considering many of its uses I could conjure right now, actually."

The soldier pondered, opening his mouth in hesitation. "Like what?"

When she turned, he came face to face with the gaze of an endless winter beyond man's simple comprehension. Trist slowly moved forward with measured steps. "I'm thinking about setting your eyes alight with flame inside of your skull. You won't go blind, and you won't lose your eyes, but it will burn. It'd be the worst pain you've ever imagined, most likely. I could keep them burning for as long as I please. You could beg, you could cry, you could get on all fours like a dog and I still wouldn't grant you mercy. I'd enjoy every last drawn out second of your suffering, only stopping when there's nothing left inside of you."

His face was heavy with sweat, face pale and hands shaking. He stained his trousers.

"I never want to see your face around me again, soldier. If you should fail in this, I will hold true to my word." She paused to temporarily straighten out her robes. "You may leave."

The soldier turned and went on shaky legs, but once he'd steadied himself he ran faster than he'd ever have in his whole entire life.

Trist watched him run with the faintest amusement on her face. After he was out of sight, she lifted her hood. It was time to go.
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