In Verse, Part 1

"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still..."

-George Gordon Byron

(Author's Note: Mildly NWS albeit censored image in a link in this chapter)

The legions of guards were expected. The twisting palace hallways, likely under some sort of distortion effect, not so much, but Incael ended up shooting himself in the foot by having his guards in fixed, unmoving positions; a maze somewhat lost its potency if all you had to look for was fresh meat. Behind him, Ash left a trail of shattered armor, some of it still falling from the bodies of unconscious men and women, along with a lot of wrecked, and expensive looking, furniture and art that Ash hoped he wasn't going to have to pay for.

The door to the depths had its own lesson: if you're going to seal a door, don't mix conventional locks and chains with a destructive effect if someone tried to open the door without the key. You didn't need a key if the door blew itself off its own hinges, and the unfortunate effect of such a precaution didn't work out so well when instead of being right in front of the explosion, you set it off by firing at the door from across the room before hiding behind an overturned table of heavy oak.

Then again, considering that Ash got about five steps down the stairway behind the door before said steps collapsed in a manner benefiting toothpicks, maybe Incael had expected that. It was a long way down, after all.

The poison gas that awaited Ash at the bottom of the stairway more or less confirmed it.

----

Uncle taught me a great deal about what can happen when men dig below the earth. Forget being buried alive, what will often kill you will kill you without you even realizing its there.

Damps, they're called. There's all sorts of nasty gasses down in the depths. Firedamp will explode at the slightest spark. White damp will put you to sleep and then kill you. Black damp will rob the air from your lungs, leave you flailing as you drown without water. Stink damp will just burn your eyes and lungs out of your body before you die. Afterdamp will mix and match the toxic fumes; how do you want to die? There's a reason the old ways of mining included bringing birds down beneath the earth and fleeing if they went quiet and still.

You made art down here uncle. So for you, I made a damp. Gold damp. A lovely bright yellow so you know you're doomed, and a gas no mine could produce, one that turns the air in lungs to stone. Let the weight of earth crawl inside you and lay claim to all of you.

Let any who would seek what's mine be crushed without a single stone being turned.

----

Gas, as a weapon, had limited application. If you used it outside, it was at the mercy of the wind, and in a wide open area, could easily disperse before it did any damage unless you dropped it right on top of your enemy (which could be easier said than done). If you used it inside, you ran the risk of falling prey to it yourself if you hung around; even if you brought protection, gas did not hang around where it was most convenient.

Normal gas, anyway. Gold damp was anything but normal. Incael had placed it at the bottom of the stairwell and throughout the lone passageway that led into the exhausted mine turned memorial and tomb, and it remained where it had been set, its thaumaturge-forged essence designed to slowly thicken the air that flowed into lungs and blood until it became as hard as rock. A horrible way to die, and in theory, a gas that wearing a filter could not stop, as the magically toxic air would rapidly clog said filter.

The problem with magical-based weapons, though, was that if left unattended, they easily fell prey to countermagic. Like say, a Fordaring charm that was made by a competent magician.

Unfortunately, that could not fully compensate for the fact Ash was not an actual thaumaturge-study Stream user. His abrupt entry into the gas didn't help either. Losing his cloak and hence having no convenient filter was the last straw.

He did not die, but he damn sure felt like it as he exploded from the golden fog within the tunnel, falling onto his knees, the Fordaring charm clattering to the stone ground. He'd managed to 'reverse' enough of the gas into actual breathable air to get through, but that did nothing for the gas Ash had already inhaled. He'd planned to use it on himself when he got clear...

Only for the charm to run out of juice several feet from safety. Which had caused Ash to take a fresh lungful of gold damp. Bad luck, that.

It was balanced, however, that he was engaged to a woman highly skilled and practiced in the medical Stream arts, which she was teaching him. He'd never be a doctor like her, but he could probably stand in as a nurse in a pinch.

Purge. Get it out.

Getting the gas out via 'Knitting' was even more painful than it going in; Ash felt like he was coughing out his whole set of lungs, poison and some other things being violently ejected from his body as he coughed and retched. I guess...sticking to the nutrient bar...for breakfast...was a good idea...after all....oh god this is why I hate ale...

All the while, in the back of his head, Ash expected the voice to speak up, to warn him of danger, of the threat he'd come here to stop. It wasn't until Ash had finally stopped hacking out what felt like half his innards that it moved to the forefront of his mind, the young blonde man feeling his hair stick to his forehead with sweat as he leaned back, gasping air that was thinner and dirtier by virtue of it being in a mine, but felt as sweet as pure oxygen. After another thirty seconds spent retriving his water canister, rinsing his mouth, and drinking the rest of the water before tossing the cannister aside brought no new threats, Ash slowly got to his feet.

He's waiting for me.

The room Ash had ended up in was roughly oval shaped, with a flattened stone floor worn smooth by endless feet and dragged equipment. It was lit by smokeless torches, the dully white fire sending flickering shadows over the two gargoyle statues that emerged from either side of the lone way out of the oval, the growling faces and armor-clad bodies of the carved stone making it clear that whatever lay beyond was about as inviting as them.

"Get going, kid. Or get got..."

Another flaw of static, unattended magic defense; keeping it active if someone tried to disperse it. In the end, Incael seemed to have skimped on longevity in engage for lethality, and a few force-slashes from Ash were enough to tear through the gold damp's enchantments and cause it to disperse back into the nothingness it had spawned from. Sheathing his sword, Ash turned back to the gargoyles, slowly approaching.

They did not spring to life, either when Ash got close to them or knocked a gloved hand on their heads. A sparkle caught Ash's eye, and he quickly turned around and picked up the fallen Fordaring charm, almost forgotten. And now just jewelry. Well, it got me out of several scraps already. Rest is on me.

-------------

He's alone.

Of course he is. Bringing people means he'd have to share. This way, he thinks he can have it all to himself.

That was something my brothers never realized, that I spared them from. People would point and call me beast, but they were true beasts. They just never realized it. If faced with the true needs within them, they'd have ripped themselves apart. All of them wanted to be at the head of the table. All of them wanted it all for themselves. I spared them from that. I am more merciful than them.

And for this 'hero' who seeks to fatten his glory on my name, to steal my power so he can lord it over his servants and the rabble outside.

He will know my mercy too, before it ends.

-----------

Ash had expected another maze to lay beyond the gargoyles. He was given the exact opposite.

Beyond the gargoyles, the ceiling began to slope upward, the passageway beyond brief before it opened up into an underground chamber so big that Ash paused to make sure he hadn't stepped into another distortion field. No dice: the grotto was real, and so large it could have easily hosted a lancing tournament and feast as easily as the typical fields for such things could, had said chamber been wide open. While as vast as a football field, it was nowhere as flat and available; across the room, pillars of stone stretched up to the ceiling, marked with carvings and engravings of everything from maps to historical moments to faces of various stripes, some even having water flow from their mouths like a classic fountain, the streams cascading down into passages carefully carved into the rock floor, the murky water passing around and underneath the main floor and walking areas. Other rocks had been fully transformed into statues instead of combined art and bracing, images of men and beasts in a dozen different sizes...

A lot of which were not exactly well crafted. Ash didn't have much of a hand for art himself, but even he could tell that half of the effigies had been carved by an amateur. Still, there was a certain calm, unusual beauty of the place, old dark stone lit with more smokeless torches transformed into a giant work of art...and obscuring the room, giving it a hundred shadows, nooks and crannies and broken lines of sight that wouldn't have existed had the room been wide open. Then again, if the room had been wide open, odds were the ground above would have collapsed into it by now. Once this held silver, once it held dreams...

Ash smelled it before he found it. It didn't make it any less horrifying.

...And now a void of neither...

A famous artist had once carefully posed a group of nude women to create a skull with their bodies. What lay before Ash as he moved around the seventh pillar he crossed was like something.pulled from that artist's nightmares, bodies and what lay within them crafted into a five-pointed, trident like shape that lay within two interlocking diamonds. A more cold-blooded man might have noted the different kinds of bodies, bodies in different points of decay that indicated different times of death. Others kinds of men might have even known what the sigil meant.

...there are children in- Was as far as Ash got. He fell to his knees again, hand clutching at his face, trying to block out the sight of it, the smell, the atrocity. Any words he might have said got lost in the horror that had driven its fingers into his throat, his lungs, his heart.

Children...women and children, why...even Ursula didn't...how can people god god...Oh GOD...

You can't help them.

Ash hitched a breath into his lungs, trying to regain his composure.

You weren't here, you can't change that. Give them peace. Get. Up.

Ash pushed himself up, his left hand finding one of his side pouches, his right gripping firmly on the hilt of his sword. The nose filters were normally used when he helped Christine out with the foul odors wounded human bodies could emit; they wouldn't have helped him against the poison gas, but they served fine here. With them in place, Ash began taking a wide berth around the desecration...

"I expected more green eyed than green faced."

The corpse-made sigil did more than shock the soul. It drew the eye, and had kept Ash from seeing the throne tucked away to the upper left of the area he'd wandered into. It was a simple chair, carved from rock and clearly meant for more ceremonial purposes than actual sitting. Ash's eyes narrowed as they finally settled onto his target, and the source of all this misery.

"Incael."

"Marsello." Incael said, his posture relaxed, one arm on the arm of his throne, the other holding his chin, his pointer finger stroking his upper lip. Outside of his gorget, pauldrons, and the braces on his upper and lower arms, the fratricidal liege of Vurnir wore no other metal; like Ash, he preferred leathers, cast in dark reds and purples. The cut on his face had stopped bleeding, said wound having neither been repaired or bandaged. And across his lap...

"So nice of you to make the extra effort to come see me."

Ash barely heard the words. Now that he could see it, he could feel it, pulsing behind his eyes, in the veins in his neck, all the way down his spine and to the heels of his boots. Old memories came. Of another battlefield, and another, and another. What it meant then, and now.

"At least you know death when you see it." Incael said, lifting the blade. "Do you like it? It whispered its name to m-"

"I know its name."

"Vyrepul."

For a moment, anger and alarm flickered over Incael's previously impassive face, though he quickly squelched it down.

"Impressive! And how did you know that, golden child? Does it speak to you too?"

"Broken things can only speak to other broken things." Ash said. "I know what that is because...because. Why tell you? Let's get on with it." Ash said, and drew his own sword. The sound of its task sang out from the motion, echoing through the depths.

"...so. You mock me. Dismiss me. How very expected. So tell me then, Marsello. Did it speak to you of this?" Incrael said, his hand raising the dark, cursed blade before him. No, not a sword. Something more, something that stained the world despite all of Ash's best efforts.

Get a measure...let him do the work...

"It echoes the need for power and the might of the powerful. Allow me to show you. All...heads..."

Ash expected some kind of blast, maybe from a different angle, making in smoke form to mirror the gold damp. The sudden agonizing pain in his neck caught him completely off guard.

"Off..."

What the hell-!

His spine felt like it was caught in a rack. His skin was on fire. Lost in pain, Ash fell to his knees again, grabbing at his throat, trying to stop the pain and failing, it HURT...

Ohgodnononono

"But..."

The horrors of terrors past whispered in Ash's ear, just before the pain stopped. Incael let out a low chortle, running one hand along the blade like it was a treasured pet.

"All it can see, dies at my whim. I would have had to do was finish the sentence. Say 'mine', and you would be dead at my feet. Even the Bloody Fire cannot resist the power of this sword. What does that say of my destin-"

Incael leapt off his throne, juking and rolling to the side as Ash's own sword cleaved through the rock, a rippling wave of force shattering the carved stone, Ash jerking his head to the side as shrapnel sprayed across his face, his legs and body pivoting to where Incael had fallen, to cut him down before he could...

Another misdirect. Seeing a man holding a Remnant on his lap took away one's eyes from other things. Like the weapon on his left arm, a Hemel device known as a Tarantula Hawk, a micro-crossbow whose arrow sizes did not denote their strength. The two bolts slammed into Ash and hurled him backwards, his feet splashing into water as his momentum carried him into one of the statues, a carving of a basilisk, its tongue and tail breaking off from the force Ash hammered into it with. Ash managed to avoid falling down this time, his free hand grabbing the statue behind him for balance, his other hand holding onto his sword.

"...good armor there. Your own personal Blackbird? I've always found getting them to part with quality Intricacies is like pulling teeth. Their own, usually." Incael said, standing and approaching Ash, his Remnant blade, the avatar of death known as Vyrepul, laid gently against one shoulder. Ash sucked air between his teeth, reaching up and yanking the crossbow bolts out of his own armor.

"Get going, kid, or get got..."

"You see how easily I could have killed you. Your death is already mine three times over. It will not be as kind as what I have denied myself." Incael said, bringing the Remnant to bear. "The world exists to be seized. You will NOT take it from me."

"I'll take something away from this. It won't be the world." Ash said, standing up, his sword gripped in both hands. "You wanna deny me mercy? Come on then.

"DENY ME."

"Efficient, Thorough, Strong, and Brave; his vision is to kill
Force is the hearthstone of his might; the pole star of his will
His forges glow malevolent; their minions never tire
To deck the goddess of his lust; whose twins are blood and fire."

-Robert Grant