Legend of Ransera

Aurin thumbed his brow at the High Lord's notice, and nodded to Aoren as well. He almost made a joke about how this dragon and former prince were fucking, while he had fucked a dragon prince himself, but he didn't know how that would play. It might even scandalize Hilana or her sister, given how much she feared little Arry now that he had a prince's fillet and a pair of draconic wings. For his part, Aurin treated Arry as he always had, and had left Solunarium without being in the least bit smitten. Smote? He was hale and hearty, whatever the case may be.

He didn't particularly want Rickter's partner-in-murder tailing him, but he figured with the reincarnation of Arcas right there present, he might not be so keen to break laws and necks.

"Thanks, boss," he said of the crystal. If they got to keep them, he would have to show it to Torin, who would geek out about it. It was too bad he hadn't managed to get him an apprenticeship with Talon back when he was still at that level, but then he hadn't trained him as his eyes and ears yet at that point and he had done rather well on his own, too.

As they descended, he kept the banter to a minimum, opening his senses, arcane and mundane, to the subterranean milieu. He may occasionally have bumped his hip against Hilana's and then looked away in mock innocence, but that was about it.

Religion wasn't his strong suit, but he did glance askance at Lord Aoren when he appeared out of shadow from his reconnaissance. Dawnfire and dark shadows; he had heard rumors about the Dawnmartyrs carrying a rune of darkness, but he didn't know any of them personally. He couldn't even find that dwarven Dawnmartyr he had ferried back to Kalzasi from Antiris free of charge. Ah, well, better the dragon than him. He didn't normally travel into danger in groups like this, so he supposed being in the middle with the lovely ladies wasn't so bad.

At the elevator shaft, he listened, he watched, and while the slipspace felt off, it didn't feel so distorted that he couldn't jump at will. At least with Traversion, he had a capable instructor. The rest of his tricks were self-taught. But he just murmured the correct word to engage in some of the enchantments he had going on and then stepped over the edge to walk down the face of the shaft as if vertical were horizontal. It felt like taking stairs, but it wasn't unduly taxing.

He figured he would meet them at the bottom or at the nearest obstruction. He didn't fancy taking on void-warped Warrens monsters by himself if he didn't have to, discretion being the better part of valor, and all that. If, for whatever reason, his boots failed him, he could always jump.

Talon waited for Hilana to make sure that the rope was steady. As soon as both her and Athalia were in place, he nodded to the others. He watched as Aurin scaled the wall as though he were taking an easy set of stairs.

“Good to know you are so well equipped, Master Kavafis.” Talon felt a hand clap his shoulder. He looked to his partner. Aoren grinned.

“He's not the only one, love.” The red haired man engaged his own boots, enacting Seeming to scale the wall right beside Aurin. He paced himself so that he could walk beside the wiley theatre owner. As Hikami picked up his aunt, Talon watched them descend. Once everyone was safely at the bottom, Talon stepped off the edge of the elevator shaft and let himself glide down. As soon as his boots touched the ground…that was when he began hearing it. The ungodly screaming that pierced him down to his soul. He could feel it. It was staggering and it made Talon stumble. He could feel the agony, the desperation, the horror, the despair.

“Aoren!” Immediately, his husband was at his side. Through the Bond, Talon made his intention clear. Aoren reached out into the stone with his Elementalism. Talon gripped the flow of the stone's internal structure with his Kinetics. The two of them moved as one parting the stone together. The shale and rock shifted and moved as Talon dissolved it using his kinetic sculpting and Aoren reinforced the structure of the earth to prevent another cave-in. He could feel his concentration on the magic slipping and jolting, the aether in the area snapping and popping in an attempt to violently writhe away from his grasp. It was the tell-tale sign of voidrillium interfering with the flow of magic in the area.

The screaming increased in pitch. Again, Talon felt it call to him. The poor soul on the other side was praying.

They were praying to him.

“Hilana!” Talon grabbed the Aether Flux in the area around them, yanking it into alignment with a concentrated force of will. “The voidrillium is interferring with the flow of aether. Help Aoren move the rock and stone. I'm holding the voidstone's influence at bay.”

Talon's brow furrowed as he concentrated.

The screaming rose higher.

Please. Hold on.

“Master Kavafis?” Aoren's voice was somewhat strained as he worked to push back against the corrosive influence of the voidrillium while also pushing at the rock and stone in their way. “I'm told you're capable of putting together wards?”

Aoren grunted and moved aside a boulder that was three times his size. It melded into the stone wall and revealed yet more stone. As he moved on to yet more fallen rock and stone, he glanced at Aurin.

“I get the feeling we're going to need one.” Aoren returned his attention to working to safely and swiftly move aside the rock and stone.

“Hikami.” Talon glanced at the warrior. “Weapons at the ready.”

It was as the last of the stone cleared, the horrifying sight greeted them. The young Synnekar miner exploding in a gorey spray of guts and viscera. Talon felt it the moment the poor miner's desperation ceased. The moment his life was snuffed out so violently. Silver eyes met violet and the voidrillium infested man quirked his head.

“No. You are discordant. You are impure. You cannot hear the Song.” The crystal corrupted man began lumbering into the dark tunnels. “You are unworthy of the Choir.”

Before Talon realized he was moving, his partner was suddenly restraining him. Anger filled Talon. A raw and pure fury at the sheer injustice of the situation, of the utter madness of being able to inflict such twisted cruelty on an innocent life and blithely walk away. Aoren had an arm around his waist and Talon realized his pact sword was in his hand. The light of his nimbus had become a silver fire that formed a corona around his head.

“Talon.” Aoren looked meaningfully to the literal horde of shinaegri and not just one but two bulbous, writhing mounds of flesh that soon stood up to reveal they were huge somaval monstrosities.

And every single one of them was corrupted by voidstone.

Talon grit his teeth, eyes locked on the form that began to disappear into the dark of the Warrens.

“This is not over.” Talon growled out.

“No. It is not.” The crystal corrupted man spoke over his shoulder before being swallowed fully by the dark and his form obscured by the mass of gravebound horde in front of them. The monsters before them began to awaken as if from a trance, teeth gnashing and claws extending. Talon straightened, the silver of Dawnfire sparking in his eyes as he stared down at them all.

They only had two options: to go through the monsters to find any survivors or to go back up the elevator shaft.

Talon’s sword ignited in silver fire.

“Show no mercy.”

Aurin hadn't expected Aoren to descend similarly to him, nor to keep pace. His smile was largely unreadable, reactive to the dragonborn lord's sudden presence as anything else. It was companionable enough, though, given the last time they had met, he hadn't felt as though he had made a good impression. Of course, his summoning of the lord's husband had involved calling into question his fitness to be called Justice... Well, if he had done the same thing to Arry's mother in Solunarium, he likely wouldn't be walking at all.

When he reached the bottom of the mine shaft, he was about to look up in case Hilana (or her sister) offered any interesting views. Mists, if Talon Novalys was freeballing, he would still take an eyeful. But any such thought was suddenly thrown out of his mind as it reeled against some kind of attack. Staggered, he reacted instinctively, throwing up wards against whatever his sembling detected. It was quick and dirty, but so was Aurin, though he didn't know if it was his own efforts or something else that brought the cacophony down to manageable levels.

Shit went south immediately, and while it occurred to him to vault to the stricken Avialae's side and then vault him directly to the Tranquil Gardens, he didn't. Perhaps it was the voidrillium pushing on his arcane senses like the auras that predicted a migraine headache, or perhaps it was self-preservation. He didn't play hero, and later he would tell himself that it was too late anyway, as the explosion of the body happened faster than any medicus could prevent.

Aurin was a bad man but even he wouldn't put on a snuff performance like the one they were forced to witness. He grimaced, a nice change from his omnipresent smirk, perhaps, but not given the circumstances. Hilana and her sister were all right. Talon was keeping some of that weird dragonshard aura from making everything awful. The muscle was attacking. Aoren was making quick work of the cave in. He nodded, then remembered Aoren didn't have eyes on the back of his head.

"Wards. Check."

Talon had initiated him and was likely still far more skilled at it, but he was also occupied with divine magic. Aurin had no plans to frontal assault those things that looked vaguely like the hordes that had beset Zaichaer until the rift abruptly disappeared as quickly as it had appeared in the first place. He had avoided that shit, as well as the voidspawn, far too often for comfort already.

No, working on shielding them from the onslaught from the back lines seemed right up his alley.

He took a steady stance and focused on the space between them and their enemies. With one trick, he sembled them, and with the another, he began to weave protections specifically against them. Thankfully, they didn't seem to have testicles made of abjinurium or they would be in real trouble. They were in real trouble already, actually.

It was difficult, even under the aegis of Talon's Presence. Sembling was rarely difficult for him anymore, but he felt as though this was going to give him a real migraine. But he couldn't fully protect them against something he didn't know. The better he knew it, the better he could bind against it.

A pinpoint of light tasked against the voidrillium and its effects appeared between his rough hands, and then it began to expand—far too slowly. This was fucking difficult. He was perspiring as though this were some heavy lifting in the Atraxian desert or something. He was relatively sure of his wards, but he wasn't going to be able to shield them entirely—not without overstepping. Mists, he was likely to overstep anyway.

Justice had better be prepared to pay for medical bills.

His wards were growing, though, and perhaps they would funnel things a bit so their front line wouldn't be overwhelmed so easily. Perhaps Talon could weave his magic fire through his ward and weaponize it. There were a lot of magical things beyond his pay grade.

"Fuck," he muttered, gritting his teeth at the effort required.