Penny

Gold & Glory: AU thread

Rum and chocolate both helped but neither the cocoa bean or juice of sugar cane could do much about the ship. The Hammer lay on her side, scantlings and broken rigging scattered in all directions. It was a blessing that the cannons and supplies had been unloaded to lighten the ship otherwise the tons of loose metal careening about might have smashed her to pieces.

“We can raise her cap’n,” Sketti declared as they sat beneath the shadow of the hull around their camp fire. Exhausted and dispirited sailors sat at their own fires, though a fair number were forming a perimeter around the ship, insurance it was to be hoped against another ghoul attack. Markus arched any eyebrow at the first mate, though it must have been what he wanted to hear.

“Be no different than carreen’er,” Sketti insisted stubbornly. Emmaline had seen the ship careened once before, where the Hammer was run up on a beach so the barnacles and sea weed could be scraped from her bottom. One of her few contributions to the ship had been to work an enchantment that prevented ship worms and sea weed from taking hold.

“When you are careening you have the incoming tide to float her Sketti,” Markus said, not quite contradicting the prickly dwarf but making a good point.

“RANALD’S BALLS!” Emmaline screamed as she leaped to her feet. Less than five feet away stood a creature out of nightmare. It was perhaps Sketti’s height though reptilian in aspect, its head was long and narrow like the iguanas Emmaline had seen at the imperial zoo. Surely no iguana had such intelligence in it’s large glassy eyes, nor did they walk upright. A great crest surmounted its head and it rose and fell in time with the inflation of its throat. The skin of the thing looked black in the firelight, though it was probably a very dark green in the sun. Patches of it’s bare hide had been covered with red ochre and small charms of obsidian or some other dark stone hung from a gold torc around its neck. It carried a staff, or perhaps a spear in one hand, a leather bag of some kind tied around the end with braided rope.

“Cccallm yoursssselves,” the thing croaked as Markus leaped to his feet and whipped his sword up almost as fast as they eye could follow, his boot striking a timber and spraying sparks up into the tropical dark.

“Ssemmaline,” the creature hissed and the word alone paused Markus all but mid thrust. There was a moment of frozen silence broken only by the crackling of the damp firewood.

“What did you say?” Emmaline asked, voice shrill and more than a little worried she was going out of her mind. The creature cocked its head at her in a disturbing alien gesture.

“Your ssscoming isss foretold, Ssemmaline,” the creature said. Emmaline became aware of the huge effort the lizard was exerting to make it’s vocal cords produce the human sounds, braids of tough muscle vibrating in its neck. Markus touched the tip of his sword to the things breast bone.

“Ok, what do you want with her?” Markus asked, his voice deceptively calm, like a sea in which the swell was building. If the lizardman was afraid he didn’t show it.

“Nossssing… ssshe issss a problem wherever ssshe goess.,” the lizard replied.

“Hey!” Emmaline objected. Sketti snorted and Markus’ lip quirked upwards.

“Ssshe bearsss the mark of the…” the lizard man made a sound that none of them could translate. The lizard lifted a taloned hand and pointed at Emmaline. By now a gaggle of sailors armed and nervous was gathering, though none seemed willing to move to violence without Markus order. Emmaline looked down at herself, then raised an arm on which the strange tattoo she had picked up in Estillea seemed to write.

“Yesssss it isss time,” the lizard replied, averting his eyes from the tattoo as though it shone a bright light. Emmaline covered the tattoo with the sleeve of her tunic feeling oddly subconscious.

“Time for what?” she demanded angrily.

“A sstrade,” the creature replied, unperturbed or simply not noticing Emmaline’s anger.

“A trade?” Emmaline suggested with an arched eyebrow. The lizard man nodded, the charms on his golden collar jingling slightly as he did so.

“You will recover the idolsss that were ssstolen by the dead that do not die,” the lizard hissed, making a vague gesture to the north with his spear/staff.

“And what do we get?” Markus asked, prodding the creature with the point of his sword.

“We will get your sssship to the sssunset sssea,” the creature replied, making a broad gesture to point towards the west. Emmaline glanced at the half destroyed hammer skeptically.

“Who is we?” she asked. Rather than responding the creature leaned back, stretching to its full height and extending his crest. He let out a weird series of hooting hisses that echoed off the nearby hull. A moment later the same cry came from the darkness, dozens or hundreds of cries that stifled the caws of native birds and rustled the jungle all around.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

"Unit was within normal paramaters at time of disconnection," the tech adept declared. The being, its sex was rendered indetermite by the encrustation of augments and mechadendrites. His crimson robe was augmented by a white plastec apron which kept the majority of the biofluid and lubricants from him as he disected the servitor. Magos Panageas was the master of a dingy servitor servicing bay that Sel had walked passed every day but never actually noticed, so ornate and festooned with chambers was the voidship. The corpse of the servitor was laid out on a large grillwork table that allowed blood and biofluid to collect in slucies below for the Mechanicus to reuse for Sel knew not what.

"Normal parameters?! It tried to kill me," Kayden growled.

"Termination of a biological unit is within normal parameters for this model," the the Magos replied through his voice synthesizer, still managing to convey the slight hint of contempt for the unchurched in these matters. Sel arched an eyebrow.

"Uhh ok so can you tell us who sent it?" Sel asked, perplexed.

"Cyber autopsy has has deleted that function," the tech priest replied.

"So why did you do it?!" Sel demanded as she realised that the priest had destroyed the very information they were looking for.

"Your request was to determine why it was acting strange. I have determined it was acting within normal parameters as per your request," the priest responded flatly. Sel and Kaiden exchanged a look and she opened her mouth to say something that one really shouldn't say to an adept of Mars. Kayden cut her off with a look.

"So who could have given such an order?' Kayden asked. The techpriest cocked his head to the side.

"Any holder of theta level clearence on the ship, such individuals include but are not limited to: the captain, the Chief Technomagos, the Navigator, the Helm..."

"Anyone in the guard, uh starting with the lowest rank," Kayden cut him off.

"A lieutenant with an administrative clearance of theta-one-seven, or a commisarial over ride," the Magos supplied helpfully. Sel and Kayden exchanged another look.

"I think that is as much as we can hope for," Kayden admitted as they left the servitor morgue and headed back towards Kayden's office. The problem was it didn't prove anything. It seemed likely that at least the Langerok Lieutenant was involved, perhaps even Sobek himself.

"We need a way to prove it, perhaps I should just call out that cur," Kayden mused. Sel gave him a look, then realised he meant challenge the other man to a duel. Bloody officers and bloody aristocrats.

"Commissar Sobek would never let it happen," she told him dashing the plan.

"Do you have any better ideas?" Kayden asked, a touch of offended hautre to his voice. Sel wracked her brain for a few moments, then a slow, and singularly unfriendly smile, spread across her face.

"How would you feel," she asked, "about getting shot?"

De Trop Disgrace: Warhammer Fantasy RP

Emmaline felt her skin crawl slightly, though whether from the oily feel of the necormantically charged air, the nearness of the walking dead, or the presence of Kasimir, a man who she was pleased to see despite having very recently cursed him for getting her into the mess she wasn’t sure. Perhaps it was having to keep up this ridiculous accent. Where on Taal green earth had he found a legitimate Brettonian knight? That presented her some real problems, but those problems would be solved too quickly if a zombie ripped out her heart and ate it so she decided not to look a gift griphon in the mouth.

“Wé should get oot of haire, befairé Julian recovairs,” she told the two men, leading the way towards a side door that opened towards the stables. She cursed herself for the fact that the two men would prevent her from doing a little light looting on the way but she supposed you had to sort out priorities at times like this.

“Julian?” Reynard asked as he brought up the rear sword raised in guard.

Le necromancair ai 'ow do you sai… l'a frappé au visage avec une bouteille,”she explained, switching to Brettonian as though forced to do so by the stress of the situation. She was close enough to fluent that any small mistakes might be excused, and demonstrating she spoke it would convince Reynard she was who she said she was. There was an agonized cry from behind them and Emmaline stepped quickly to the door and threw it open.

“ELEANOR!” Julian roared, his voice filled with a dark menace that overlay his youth weirdly.

“She is charm she is grace, most of all she needs to get the hell out of this place,” Kasimir observed wryly. Reynard gave him a look, as though slightly offended on Eleanor’s behalf. Further discussion was forestalled as a ring of figures emerged from the darkness. The reek of death, new and old preceded them like a bow wave. Some were ancient skeletons with witchfire eyes, others were grooms, servants, tenant farmers who just this morning had risen to their daily labors expecting nothing more than an average day of toil. Some held weapons, improvised peasant tools for the most part, and they moved in eerie unison, drawing tight like the string of a bag. Horses were screaming, spooked by the smell of death or the more metaphysical reek of dark magic on the air. The stable door exploded outwards and a half dozen horses bolted down the valley eyes wide an rolling. One of them came too close to an ancient moss encrusted skeleton which, according to whatever arcane logic animated it, hacked down with a rusty reaping blade. The grubby metal punched into the horses neck like a meathook going into a side of bacon. The horse screamed and flinched away, ripping the hook out of the skeletons bony grasp. It staggered a half dozen feet, shook its head furiously and managed to dislodge the weapon with a colossal spray of bright arterial blood. It staggered a few more feet, sank to its knees and then toppled dead, steaming in the chill air. Emmaline shut her gaping mouth and then closed the door with surprising calm.

“Zé 'airses might not be such a good plin,” she admitted, taking a step back from the door a moment before the rusty blade of a trench mattock punched through the thin timber.

“N'ayez pas peur, madame, je vous défendrai au péril de ma vie,” Reynard declared grandly, thrusting Emmaline back behind him, apparently in happy ignorance of the fact that at any moment Julian or more of his undead minions would be coming up behind them.

“Lets make our last stand somewhere else, closer to our own horses maybe,” Kasimir suggested, which was good because it would have been out of Eleanor’s character to offer tactical advice after such a chivalrous gesture.

“Eleanor!” Julian roared, appearing at the far end of the hallway with a swarm of zombies.

“All I wanted to do was keep you safe, we were friends!” he ranted, then he drew back his hand, dark energy gathering around it. Emmaline felt her body prickle and tried desperately to think of a counterspell.

“I can’t let you go, I can’t let you tell anyone, don’t you see what you have forced me to do!” he all but wailed, then, like a striking snake he whipped his hand forward and hurled a bolt of pure darkness at her. Emmaline had just enough time to scream before Reynard thrust her aside and gripping his shield with both hands parried the bolt. To everyone's surprise the spell reflected from the shield, smashing upwards into the roof. The plaster molding yellowed, blackened then fell into dust pouring down into the hallway in a chalky cloud. Julian roared with anger and hurled another bolt, which was similarly deflected. The smash of tools against the outer door reminded them that Julian didn’t need to kill them with his spells, merely hold them in position long enough for his minions to gather.

“For Ulric!” Kasimir shouted but instead of charging like a lunatic, he hacked into the plaster wall with all his might, carving a great gash into the plaster. Emmaline whispered a few words of her own and crooked a surreptitious finger. When Kasimir next struck a three foot section of wall exploded to powder, carving a hole into the adjacent hallway. Emmaline ducked through, climbing past the ancient wall timbers and into the drawing room on the other side. Kasimir was shouting at Reynard to follow, something he was more likely to do now that the noblewoman he had come to rescue was gone though Emmaline’s action had been more to save her own skin than to advance any such agenda. The knight backed out keeping his shield up to ward of spells as he came. Emmaline picked up a chair and hurled it through the window that lead out into a courtyard, following the shattered glass by only as long as it took her to brush away the jagged shards with the foot of a stool.

“Whaire do we go we cannot leavé zis veehlian aliv,” Reynard objected as he joined them, his eyes cutting back over his shoulders for any more spells being flung their way.

“The safety of Madmoiselle De Courcy is our paramount duty,” Kasimir said quickly, “We cannot put her in danger no matter how much we might wish to stay and fight.” Emmaline nodded in enthusiastic collaboration with this line of thinking.

“Oui aii supposé you aré righ,” Reynard admitted.

“We 'avé to go whaire are yur steeds?” Emmaline demanded, even as she headed out of the courtyard and into the apple orchard beyond.

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Heroes of The Guard: A Warhammer 40K RP

Sel peered at the handcuffed troopers with a leery look. They glared at her but with no more venom than they had for Kayden and Morek. Had Commissar Sobek really been delaying her or was it simple chance? It seemed unlikely that a man as fanatical as the Commissar appeared would be involved in such a thing. Maybe he was just predictable enough that these troops had taken advantage.

"Uh yes sir," Sel agreed, falling in beside Kayden. Neither of them mentioned the Langeroth's as they walked the few hundred yards to the training bay. The cavernous cargo hold had been converted into an assault course in which shipping crates formed walls, rope climbs, and other obstacles over which the troops of second platoon were currently scrambling in full battle gear. It had clearly been going on for some time and the troops were haggard and exhausted. When they reached the end of the course, they unslung their las guns and fired across the bay at improvised targets made from discarded rubber tires. The troops had five rounds to score a hit, no easy feet with hands shaking and lungs heaving from the course. After they managed a hit, visible by a puff of black smoke, they slung their rifles and jogged back to the start of the course, a shipping container filled with cold water to improvised a bear pit.

Sergeant Crispin stood beside the container, screaming abuse and encouraging the troops with blows and curses. He grabbed a particularly laggardly soldier, one of the half dozen replacements they had been assigned, and physically pitched him into the water with copious and unflattering commentary on the unfortunate troopers parentage. As a replacement for Mattalow, Crispin was a definite improvement but he swung a little too far in the other direction. He was a disciplinarian, almost a martinette, always willing to pile on the punishment detail for the smallest infractions. Crispin seemed to view Sel as an irritation which had to be endured, which was close enough to how she felt about him as made no difference.

"Move you sorry bastards! I want you to cut ten seconds or we will be running this for the rest of the cycle!" he screamed, slapping another trooper over the head as he staggered past. Sel resisted the urge to reach for a lho stick deciding that on balance she would rather stay in to good graces of the common soldier. Crispin might win the respect of the troops before they got into action, but if he kept coming down on every infraction with the proverbial wrath of Macharius Sel was going to make a point of not standing near him when the bullets started flying.

"These Langeroth pricks are going to be a problem," Sel confided, leaning on a bollard as she watched the platoon run the assault course.

Gold & Glory: AU thread

Emmaline ran back towards the ship waving her arms and screaming. The sound of combat echoed around. Swords crunched into flesh, men screamed and ghouls howled. The cacophony spread, monkeys chittered and flights of brightly colored birds burst from the trees to the relative safety of the sky. By the time she reached the ship the men hauling it were beginning to slack on the cables. Unfortunately the men on the starboard watch, closer to the action, were doing so faster than there companions to port. The result was that the ship was already beginning to turn on her greased runners, and within a few seconds was likely to capsize.

“Keep pulling!” she screamed, grabbing the nearest crew member and shoving him back towards a rope he had just abandoned. The crewman snarled and lifted a fist to strike at her, then saw who it was and thought better of it

“What is happening?” he demanded, his hand on his cutlass and his eyes towards the sounds of the fighting.

“The ship is going to fall over if you dont…” there was a sudden grinding sound. Emmaline eeped and bolted back towards Markus as the ship began to tip over on its wooden rollers. It seemed slow at first, but accelerated as men screamed and ran from the ropes. A great shadow came down over Emmaline and she felt a pang of despair as she realised she wasn't going to make it. Uselessly she covered her head as thousands of pounds of wood smashed down atop her with a sound like the world ending.

Death took longer than Emmaline imagined. So long in fact that she opened one eye to see what was keeping it. To her surprise she was very much still alive. Against all odds the falling ship had come down in just such a way that one of the open gun ports had passed her through the hull. Timber all around her groaned and she shuddered to think of what had happened to the rigging, not to mention the members of the crew who hadn’t run fast enough. She was very lucky that all the guns and stores had already been unloaded or she would have been smashed to paste regardless. There was enough light that she could clamber along to the waist of the ship. The gratings were gone and she could see along the length of the mainmast now laying horizontal on the ground. All around her were the cries of wounded and dying men, some partially crushed, other torn by flying ropes or showers of splinters. And if all that wasn’t bad enough there were still ghouls out there.

“Great.” Emmaline sighed.

De Trop Disgrace: Warhammer Fantasy RP

"Julian! Julian you lét me oot of haire right now!" Emmaline shouted, pounding on the door with balled fists. Her skin crawled from where the corpse of Colditz had gripped her as he dragged her back to her rooms and locked her in. Judging from the dull return of her blows, the corpse was leaning against the door on the outside. She spread her arms behind her and screamed wordlessly, stamping her foot with frustration. The door remained unmoved. Emmaline stomped over to the window an threw up the sash. Iron bars had been set in the wall to cover the window and prevent escape. Beyond the bars evening was falling and tendrils of mist were coiling up out of the valley, giving the impression of a vast leviathan pulling itself free of the earth. The impression was deepend by the greenish glow of the rising moon which seemed to turn the mist luminous and sinister. Shapes seemed to move in the fog, to Emmaline's eye they were shambolic and threatening though she never made one out clearly. She made a mental note to retire the phrase: at least it can't get any worse.

"Well I suppose being eaten by beastmen isn't the worst thing," Emmaline muttered, considering the dozens of miles of wilderness between the valley and civilization. She gripped the bars for a moment, feeling the cold iron beneath her palms. No time like the present. Emmaline hurried over to her dresser and took a nail file and a bottle of brandy. She pulled the cork with her teeth and spat it away, taking a long swallow. That was doubtless a sin against good liquor but her nerves needed steadying. Etching the runes she needed into the iron bars was a frustrting task. Not for the first time Emmaline promised Ranald that if she survived she was going to pay more attention to her studies. When she was finally satisfied with the runes she splashed some brandy over the bars and took a step back.

"Eleanor?" Emmaline nearly jumped out of her skin as the door creaked open. She spun about, cursed at not shutting the window and endeavored to cover it as best she could with her stance. Julian stepped through the door with an appologetic look on his face. He looked awful. His usual lean face was haggard with unhealthy dark circles under his eyes, a slight tick tugged at his left eye every few seconds and his hands trembled.

"I'm sorry about all this," he said earnestly, as though he had ruined a ball rather than used black sorcery to kill an entire estate worth of people and animate thier corpses to do his bidding.

"Pléase you 'ave to let me go," Eleanor begged, she would have dropped to her knees and begged, if that wouldn't reveal what she had been doing at the window. Julian's eyes flicked to the bottle of brandy in her hand and, absurdly, Emmaline felt a little embarassed.

"You aren't planning to hit me with that are you?" Julian asked, his eyes cutting back towards the statue still corpse of Colditz. Emmaline hadn't considered it but suddenly wished she had. Instead she took another long slug and held the bottle out towards Julian. The necromancer shook his head.

"I need to stay clear headed," he said, maddeningly calm about the whole situation. He seemed to be determined to act as though this were no different from any of their other conversations, as though he hadn't revealed himself to be a monster.

"It all started at university," Julian explained, unasked. He flopped down onto a couch and patted the space beside him. Emmaline considered her options and stepped towards Julian, taking another theatrical swig to draw his attention away from the window. Brandy burned in her belly and she felt her cheeks flushing. She wanted to scream at him that she didn't care but she was too practised a con artist to give in to that emotion.

"Eet dosen't mattair ai know you are a good man et zat you would nevair 'urt me please let me go," she beeseched, taking his hand in her own. It might have been imagination but there seemed to be a slimy texture to the boy's flesh that hadn't been there before. He gripped her tightly, obviously pleased at the contact.

"At first it was just history," he confided, "I became fascinated with the Sylvanian wars." Emmaline knew only the vaugest legends of those invasions, mostly from sermons she had been forced to listen to when she was a girl. Priests liked telling stories about those dark times, each one seeming to think that the time of the Three Emperors was a fertile and original field for parables.

"But the university had all kinds of materials, some of them had... passages in them. I knew they were proscribed but I just wanted to learn," Julian explained. Emmaline had heard of such texts, books where spells lurked in code, in foot notes, even masqureading as childrens nursery rhymes. An educated man with talent and money might easily piece them together but to try such spells, incomplete and corrupt was as close to insanity as Emmaline could imagine.

"Sigmar save me how am I going to explain all this," Julian wailed, putting his head in hands.

"Well you could tell evairyoné zat a plagué came through and wé waire ze on-lee survivairs," Emmaline suggested, unable to turn off her devious mind even now. Julian looked up at her considering it, his eyes widened with sudden hope as he turned over the idea.

"That... that is a really good idea," Julian admitted. "But...I could never trust you not to reveal what I have done. Emmaline shrugged her shoulders.

"But I will be away in Brettonia, and who would believe a simple woman?" Emmaline suggested. Julian nodded eagerly and seemed ready to spring to his feet, just as suddenly his eyes narrowed.

"What happened to your accent madmo..." The brandy bottle crashed into Julian's head with a shattering impact that flung shards of glass and drops of brandy in all directions. The necromancer slumped on the couch in a daze. Emmaline leaped to her feet but the zombie Colditz was already comming through the door, obeying some command to defend Julian. Emmaline screamed in frustration, then darted for the window, her lips forming hurried arcane sylabbles. She leaped at the window and crashed through the iron bars, transmuted to glass by her hasty spell. She plunged six feet to the tile roof a floor below, then slid down the incline disloding a tide off wooden shingles. She made a desperate grab for the edge but the shingle came away in her hand and she fell, crashing down into a decorative shrub.

"Stop her!" Julian roared from the window, moping at the blood running from his scalp. Emmaline leaped to her feet, hiked up her robe and sprinted off into the darkness.

Death and Desire: A Warhammer Fantasy RP

“We can hope the Sultan’s men are a messy white smear somewhere,” Calliope said grimly. Their escape from Copher had not been unnoticed, despite the fact that they had struck out to the east, rather than running west towards Lashiek and the bay of corsairs. They had seen the dust on the horizon for an hour or so before the Roc struck and had planned to slip away during the chill of the desert night. That, at least, was no longer a problem.

“What is this place?” Calliope mused, striking a light to a torch from the handful of possessions they had been able to steal before they fled the city.

“I am no scholar,” Bahadir replied.

“And here I was thinking you were a Doktor of Historaia,” Calliope snarked, though Bahadir merely looked blank at the unfamiliar Reikspeil terms.

“I have heard legends that when the Great Kings ruled across the Sands these lands were their distant satrapys,” Bahadir said and it was Calliope’s turn to run into the language barrier. Satrapy? He continued and she didn’t have to reveal her ignorance.

“When their governors displeased them, it was said they were forbidden to return to their homeland in death as well as in life, and that they were entombed in the sands of Araby forever,”” Bahadir explained. Calliope grunted noncommittally as she edged into the tunnel. She reached her hand out into the column of falling sand and felt it run over her fingers for a few moments. Edging around it they found that the tunnel had been paved with large blocks of sandstones. Columns studded the walls supporting ancient almost illegible frescos. Dust from the sand fall billowed around their feet like fog and Calliope pulled her scarf around her face to stop it from tickling her nose. They pushed down the hallway into a large room. Idols of strange and forgotten gods sat on pedestals. Some were simple wood carvings, others were laced with gold or had eyes of semiprecious stones. Calliope leaned close to one that appeared to be a woman wrapped in a large snake. This idol looked newer and was considerably curvier than the other female deities present. The figures features looked almost Imperial, and its hair was highlighted with pale yellow chalk. Calliope looked upwards and saw that the roof was covered with faux constellations picked out in verdegied bronze.

“What is it that makes you southerners so eager to die? Too many dates? Lack of decent ale?” Calliope wondered.

The Namespace of the Rose

This is genius

De Trop Disgrace: Warhammer Fantasy RP

“Eleanor. Eleanor open the door!” Emmaline struggled out of the bath she had been luxuriating in, splashing water all over the floor. She stepped out and immediately slipped on the dark wooden floor, comically pin wheeling her arms before landing on her rump in a crash.

“Lady Eleanor?! Are you ok?! Julian’s shrill voice came through the door, “are you ok.”

“Vhat are you goeng to do break down le doair?” she called back acidly as she scrambled to her feet and towleed herself off.

“What?” Jullian called back, unable to penetrate the accent through the thick timber door.

“Ould on a momon,” she called, pulling on a gown and stumbling into the main room. She turned they key and pulled the door open. Julian nearly fell into the room, all but scratching at the door. His earnest face was pale and his lips were visibly trembling. His eyes bulged at her state of relative undress and his pale face suffused with a blush so deep Emmaline worried he was about to pass out.

“Well? Why aré you breakeng down mon doair and intairrupteng mon bath?” she demanded. Julian opened and closed his mouth like a fish. Emmaline snapped her fingers repeatedly under the boy’s nose.

“Oh ahhh… men just arrived, men from my father,” he whined, all but wringing his hand. Emmaline manuvered him onto a couch and thrust a glass of schnapps into his hand. He swallowed it in a convulsive gulp then gasped as the liquor’s burn hit. Emmaline plucked the glass from his hand before he could drop it.

“Zo mén arrived from yur fathair…” Eleanor prompted, struggling to reign in her mounting frustration. Julian blinked and then seemed to return to himself.

“They are closeted with Colditz now,” he explained, “I think there is a priest with them.”

“A priest?” Eleanor asked then her eyes widened.

“Eez 'e haire to marry uz do you think?” she asked. Julian looked momentarily confused.

“I… I think he might have found out about… no, I wont let it happen!” he cried then leaped to his feet and rushed out of the room.

“Julian!” Emmaline yelled after him confused and starting to grow a little afraid. She looked down at the schnapps bottle in her hand and took a long drink, then quickly started dressing.

The screams came a half hour later once Emmaline was dressed and heading out in search of Julian. They seemed to come from the valley and what they portend Emmaline had no idea. She slipped from the room and to her surprise Colditz and his guards were no where to be found. Emmaline wasted only a few minutes to grab a few valuable items then headed for the stables, willing to take advantage of whatever breaks came her way. More screams came from the house as whe was pulling a saddle onto an expensive looking horse. There was something fell on the air and she could feel a knot of ice in her stomach. The need to get away from this place was a desperate throbbing thing. The buckles were just about in place when a hand fell on her shoulder. Emmaline screamed and tried to twist away but the fingers gripped like iron. She was whirled around and found herself face to face with Colditz. Or what was left of his face. Great bloody rents had been torn in it with what looked like claws and his palor was cold and dead. Witchfires burned in his eyes and though he had not yet the grey color of the grave the stink of dark sorcery poured off the cadaver. Other horrors, older fleshless skeletons stained with graveyard earth and moss joineed Colditz, hemming her in. Screaming she was dragged infront of the manor.

“It is ok Eleanor, it will be ok!” Julian was shouting, his eyes wide and wide with shock. Emmaline could pick out burst blood vessels in his face and dark magic coiled around him.

“I learned this at university, I know it looks bad but I promise I’ll keep you safe… I’ll let you….” he trailed off shooting her an agonized look as he realised that if he let her, or anyone else go the truth of what he was would get out. He was a necromancer. A wizard who tampered with the forces of life and death and was forever damned by the poison of dark magic.

“Look I’ll think of something,” he promised. One of the chambermaids stumbled from the manor and was struck down by a skeleton with a scythe. Julian whimpered then muttered something, the maid rose jerkily to join a growing perimeter around the house.

"Julian! Julian! You have to let me go!" Emmaline shrieked, momentarily forgetting her accent.

“I’ll think of something,” Julian promised as the zombie of Colditz dragged Emmaline screaming into the house.