A Slice of Mhaldorian Life

Wreathed in fog and adorned in blood, the stygian crossroads was especially lovely tonight.

The Mhun threaded her way carefully through the vivisected corpses surrounding the cobblestoned square, pausing to admire some of the fresher displays of cruelty before continuing on towards the great obsidian monolith in the square’s centre. The Commandant really did do some fine work, she thought. The Siren’s artistic skill was recognisable anywhere, even without the signed note on each bloodied body declaring her triumph.

Two figures stood in the shadow of the monolith: a tall, silver-haired fayad in the robes of the Magi, and an even taller Troll in fullplate, gauntleted fists clenched around blades of wicked steel. Both greeted her as she approached, and she inclined her dark head in response.

A figure emerged into view from Mhaldor Road below, rapidly revealing itself to be a bearded Troll - just a fraction shorter than the one beside her, but still she had to tilt her head to look up at him as he arrived. Glancing between the pair, she sighed. “More Trolls.”

Both Trolls looked at each other, then smirked in very similar fashion. “More Mhuns,” replied the taller of the two, his blue gaze fixing pointedly first on a mhun smelter labouring tirelessly nearby, then on her. The other flashed a sparkling Gem of Transmutation at her, eyes dancing with mirth. “A Troll…for now.”

Well. Two could play at that game.

Her gloved fingers clenched over an identical gem in her pocket, and she brought it to her lips, whispering prayers to the spirits of the fallen for a fresh chance at life. For a moment, she held the bulk of a Troll's form in her mind's eye, but lost her nerve at the last instance.

A corona of light briefly surrounded her, blinding her as she felt her body begin to shift and change. When the brilliance faded, she found herself in the graceful body of a Tsol'aa instead of a Troll’s typically lumbering frame. She looked down at her long-fingered hands, then flicked her gaze up and noticed for the first time that she was eye level with the fayad, who was watching her intently. Unfortunately, she noted with annoyance, she still wasn’t much taller than either Troll’s shoulder.

“I thought to become a Troll too, but changed my mind at the last moment,” she explained in answer to the unspoken question. “They are too…”

“Ugly?” suggested the fayad.

“Tall?” said the blue-eyed Troll, grinning.

She narrowed her grey eyes at them, flicking a gloved hand in a languid gesture of dismissal. “-Cumbersome-. Too much of..everything.”

“Excellent meat shields, though,” a soft voice whispered from the darkness.

She nodded in agreement, then frowned, looking about herself. The extra height was nice, but there was…just so much more of herself to move. How on earth did Trolls not constantly run into doorframes or low passageways? Surely most buildings would not be built for Trolls, save for enormous castles and cathedrals.

“It is a wonder you do not hit your heads more often,” she commented, then thought about it. “Or perhaps you do, and that is the entire point.” After all, Trolls were notoriously durable. And…slow. Maybe that was because they hit their heads a lot.

The sword-toting Troll laughed and stepped into a deep lunge, which - much to her chagrin - only put him slightly below her eye level. “The secret’s to do lunges through doorways. Keeps the head intact, and it’s good training. Constantly.”

Before the Tsol’aa could reply, the swirling red fog parted before the arrival of a beautiful brown-haired Siren, seated atop a giant eagle. Without excuse or greeting to the congregated Mhaldorians, she chanted words of dark power that echoed around the crossroads. Necromantic energy wreathed a dark nimbus around the gleaming scimitar in her hands, moments before she drove the weapon harshly into the ground.

Abruptly, hundreds of sickly white maggots burst forth from between the cobblestones, accompanied by grisly skeletal hands that clawed frantically at any living thing nearby. Yet no one batted an eyelid as the maggots squelched forward in every possible direction, a sea of wriggling paleness that streamed across the thoroughfares.

Their appearance was the only warning before the Siren pointed her scimitar at the fayad and tapped her heels to the eagle, urging it to leap forth in sudden attack. Clearly expecting this, the Tsol’aa sidestepped neatly to avoid the Siren's powerful scimitar slashes at the fayad, splitting sable skin open to reveal crimson flesh as his body stiffened in paralysis.

“But surely that must be…slow,” the Tsol’aa commented to the Troll, still frowning at him as she turned her body slightly to avoid the Siren's follow-up assault on the furious fayad. Blood spattered anew on the cobblestones a second later.

Rising to his full, considerable height, the Troll crossed to the doorway of a shop just off the crossroads, clusters of maggots squelching haplessly under his boot with each step. He paused as the fayad, now astride a fiery jackdaw, hurtled hurriedly past towards Purgatory Way, and waited for the Siren and her eagle to follow before he knelt again in a smooth lunge through the doorway.

Standing up, he did an abrupt about-face, and repeated the motion as he crossed the threshold once more. “Not so slow, really,” he rumbled.

Dimly, the Tsol’aa’s deathsenses flared with the extinguishing of the Siren’s life by the fayad mage’s burning will. It didn't take long for the victor himself to return and begin spinning glittering crystals, calling forth vibrating crystalline tones as he wiped a taloned hand across his brow in relief.

The Tsol’aa herself, however, was too fixated on the Troll’s antics to pay much attention. “Well, the debate can only be settled one way,” she said to him.

“A lunge-off?” he grinned.

She chuckled in response, the sound low and melodic. “Well, -you- lunging, and I…not.”

“Oh, I won’t match a Serpent for speed,” he admitted, just as the Siren - bloodlust flaring in her eyes - reappeared. Breathing heavily, she darted forward with unnatural swiftness to slash at the fayad again with her scimitars. The shorter Troll stepped politely aside to allow her unrestricted access.

“But the right sort of lunge,” the blue-eyed Troll continued, leaning away slightly as the fayad pointed a disfigured birch staff at the Siren and sent a swirling helix of ice and water to freeze and crack her skin, “can be quite the dogged pursuit. For example…” He walked away from the crossroads, crushing more maggot legions as he disappeared down the mountain.

The fayad clicked taloned fingers, and a bolt of conjured lightning shot forth to transfix the Siren. Gasping for breath, she clutched at her throat briefly, but gritted her teeth and swung her weapons determinedly at the fayad again - rewarded by a groan of pain as the mage stumbled, his face pale as the onslaught siphoned parts of his lifeforce away.

Not a second later, the ground shook as heavy, armoured footsteps thundered in approach, and the blue-eyed Troll materialised - blade-first - in a precise lunge, skewering the shorter Troll unerringly upon the end of his wicked blade and earning an uncontrollable scream of agony.

No second battle ensued, however, as the assailant straightened and allowed his writhing victim to slide painfully off his blade. “Well struck,” the bearded Troll groaned, holding his injured side. Deftly, he uncorked a vial at his side with one large hand and took a sip. Split flesh began knitting quickly together, and soon enough he was back on his feet.

His compatriot nodded to him, and smiled in turn at the Tsol’aa as he tipped her a wink. “Violent lunges,” he said, his casual words at odds with his deft shift to avoid the fayad's ferocious blast of fire and water towards the Siren.

The Tsol’aa made a show of grimacing slightly, but the telltale amusement in her eyes betrayed her mirth. “Yes,” she said, smoothly twisting her body out of range of the Siren's murderous riposte, “unfortunately I have also been acquainted with these. But on the subject of speed, what if you were a Troll Serpent?”

Not far from them, the fayad lifted his staff, unleashing a stream of flame so brilliantly white that all present had to shield their eyes briefly. Distantly, the Tsol’aa heard the Troll rumble, “I tried it for some time. I found out that hypnosis and such did not quite lead me to effectiveness,” he said conversationally as they reopened their eyes.

“That, and my capabilities for infiltration were atrocious,” he admitted. Behind the stone monolith, the roar of crackling flame and the ring of steel on steel echoed as the fayad and Siren continued to tussle fiercely.

“-You- were a Serpent?” the fayad called over, gasping slightly for breath as the fingers of his gloved hand flexed and twitched in arcane patterns, bending the elemental forces to his will to keep the Siren on the defensive. “Intriguing.”

“My first was monk,” the Troll called back, sparing a brief glance in time to see the Siren throw all her strength into driving her scimitars through the fayad, eliciting expressions of agony and horror from the latter as venomous blade cleaved cloth and bone alike apart.

Spreading its incandescent wings, the fayad’s jackdaw bore him off down the northwestern road in retreat, swiftly followed by the Siren and her eagle in hot pursuit.

The Tsol’aa said to the Troll, “A Troll Monk makes sense. A Troll Serpent-“

She cut off as an irresistible, unholy summons slunk through the air and into the ears of all present.

"Come," it beckoned, seizing control of their minds and bodies, and as one the congregation rose in a trance and walked away from the crossroads to the road beyond.

The powerful compulsion to obey only broke when they stood before the Siren's demonic Baalzadeen. As the fayad and the Siren traded spell for slash in the background, the Tsol’aa shook her head once, clearing it of the Baalzadeen’s spell, and levelled a pointed glare at the grotesque creature before making her way back to the crossroads.

“…is something I have never quite seen,” she finished as she drew within earshot of the Troll once more.

“I did try to tell him,” a soft voice whispered to her, nearly drowned out in a cacophony of squawks and clattering talons as eagle and jackdaw charged by, “that his ‘sneak’ needed a little work.”

The fayad reappeared at the crossroads without warning, pointing a fist at the ground. Streams of frosty air billowed out from the bracers on his forearms, quickly coating the bloodstained cobblestones in a layer of crimson-tinged ice.

“With the correct artefacts and build,” the Troll replied, speaking slightly louder as the eagle-riding Siren charged in to cruelly skewer the fayad in a move reminiscent of his earlier actions, “we’re capable of being effective Serpents.” A hoarse scream punctuated the end of his statement.

“Does one of those artifacts involve making you smaller?” the Tsol’aa asked skeptically, ignoring the flash of sparks and lightning behind her as the fayad attempted to throw the Siren’s focus off, although to little apparent avail.

The distant flare of crimson flame illuminated the Troll’s thoughtful expression, an oppressive heat rolling over the area in quick succession. “A touch more towards whipcord muscles, as opposed to bulk,” he replied to her.

“But really, you average -seven feet-,” the Tsol’aa insisted. Behind her, the Siren deftly swapped out her scimitars for battleaxes, and drove the fading fayad clean off his feet with the force of her blows. He sagged like a puppet with its strings cut, his eyes twitching madly as he stared about in all directions. “Even him,” the Tsol’aa continued, unheeding of the bloodshed behind her as she gestured at the shorter Troll,” and he is not the largest!”

The Troll laughed, a rumbling, gravelly sound. “Don’t tempt me to pick up the sneaky arts again, just to show you.”

Finally, the Siren stepped down from her giant eagle, raising her hand to wreathe it in black, crackling necromantic energy as she approached the fallen fayad. For the first time, the conversation paused as all turned to watch.

With a diabolical laugh, the Siren stiffened her hand and slowly ran it down the fayad’s splayed-out body, splitting his chest in two. Apparently wholly deaf to his agonised screams of pain, she took her time to methodically rip apart his organs, ending by ripping out his sternum with a detached smile on her face.

A final, decisive push from her drove the bloodied bone clean through the body, sheer force embedding it into the very cobblestones and pinning the twitching body to the ground as the fayad's torment finally met a grateful end.

“Ah, and there we go,” the Troll commented, and the Tsol’aa nodded, flashing the Siren a faint smirk as she glanced down at the vivisected corpse. “Another one for the gallery,” she agreed.

Blood streaked down the Siren’s face as she lifted her brown head. She seemed about to say something, but just then a sturdy Rajamala appeared on the horizon, whip and dirk in hand, and her eyes narrowed immediately in keen assessment. He froze, seeing her, and quickly darted off to the northwest; she swung herself up onto her eagle and was instantly in fierce pursuit, the avian leaving bloodstained tracks across the melting ice as it dashed off.

“And there she goes,” the other Troll murmured, and the Tsol’aa’s smirk only widened. Opposite her, a shadowed figure sighed and attempted to sidestep the growing pool of blood and gore, but to little avail.

“Should we move to the Cathedral?” an unseen voice ventured.

No one moved, and the Tsol’aa shook her head. “Such is simply the way of Mhaldorian life.”

For days after the conversation flowed just as smoothly as the dance of bloodshed, neither interrupting nor anathema to the other. It never occurred to any of the Mhaldorians that it should or could be any other way, for the harmonies of battle and blood were as common a background in the Baelgrim as birdsong and rustling leaves in other cities.

——————————

Days later, a letter arrived for the Tsol’aa in the Incubi Archives.

[Vivisections from the crossroads to the Cathedral. The dream is realised.]

She chuckled as she read the letter, folding it neatly and gathering up her things. The relentless artist was prolific. It seemed, as promised, she had a new installation to visit.

Mhaldor was only getting more beautiful by the day.