The Shadow Tyrant

A nightmare. That's all that this could be. A horrible nightmare.

A hollow ringing resolves into scattered screams piercing the snarl of flames and the rubble that entombs you. Sucking a smoke-laced breath through your teeth, you heave a stone off of your chest, wincing as the shifting weight reveals cracked ribs that soon begin to knit themselves. In dredging yourself clear of the shattered remnants of the inn you were in moments ago and working to pull your body back together, the reality of the unfolding horror rushes back in.

Warm lamplight and calm dusk; then depthless midnight and clamor; and finally, flames and death. The demise of the town of Immeria.

The streets run thick with shadow, despite the blinding brightness dancing around. It rolls about your ankles as you trudge through ruins, pouring agonizing supernatural cold into your nerves that is almost a welcome reprieve from the oppressive heat. An intense gale whips the blaze and the smoke all around you, making every step a challenge. Though Jason and the Umbra likely reap what remains of the town not far beyond the flame, your mind is on one thing: Ascelina.

Struggling to stay on your feet, you cast waves of golden light that rake away pulverized stone and shattered wood, choked voice quietly and despairingly crying out for her--if not for her ears, then for those of whatever God might deign to hear you. The wind rails against you, and the sky grows thick with unnatural shadow that bears down on you. The cold dread of the Umbra's overwhelming presence mixes with the acrid stench of the inferno. It begins to feel as if the whole world is drowning in fire.

You scream all but incoherently into the sky as it bleeds its stars before your eyes, each wave more forceful than the last, sweeping layer after layer of debris away and finding only mangled corpses and further ruin. Visoring your eyes as you stagger into the 'shelter' of what remains of the building's anterior, a sturdy spine of stone holding a few walls and fragments of the ceiling against the wind, you spy the bar. Though it's strewn with shattered glass, planks and wind-lofted chunks of stone and dirt, it still seems as if it could afford some shelter against the storm... and lo and behold, you catch faint movement behind it.

Huddled behind the bar is the bartender, a kindly and charming older man whom you'd become acquainted with in your stay in Immeria. Nervously, he draws a torn fragment of his shirt across the hemorrhaging thigh of someone over whom he looms--but as he leans back to look at you, you catch sight of Ascelina's blood-marred face!

"Oh, Gods--Tamaz? That you? No way--anybody else out there?" he insists as you slide over the bartop and land in a crouch, wasting no time in assessing her. Though strained and gurgling faintly as blood trickles down her chin, she still draws breath.

"Nobody--fuck, Tom, where's she hit besides the thigh?" Though Tom is quick to try and show you, it's instantly obvious as you try to lift her shoulder to peer at her back and are greeted with a massive sanguine stain in concentric circles, source concealed beneath another makeshift bandage. Gliding gilded claws across her quivering skin, motes of sunlight seep into her, tracing and rebuilding threads of nerve, vein and muscle. A broken fragment of a steel rod seeps from the suckering wound in her chest, as her flesh winds back together in its wake.

"Please, baby, come on... wake up, please... I need you..." you beg, turning her over fully onto her side and feeling your heart drop as you watch a deluge of blood spill past her lips. Tugging her tightly against you, you sob into her shoulder, pleas falling into incoherent blubbering as you pump out as much healing magic as your weary body can take. Tom, for his part, realizing that he's well out of his league, sinks awkwardly into the corner of the bar, a deep frown on his portly face as he peeks over the bar.

The sky is not the only thing being subsumed by the shades, now. The world grows ever darker, ever colder, as rolling black overtakes the flame. The Umbra draws near.

"T-Tamaz... I think he's comin'..." mutters Tom, witnessing the last of the flame disappears beneath a sea of personified hatred. As the shadow rolls in, it begins to glimmer with flecks of red--tiny, nascent eyes, scanning the smoke as they flit every which way... for you.

Gritting your teeth and wincing as you realize that you must face the Shadow Tyrant alone, you draw Veilbane off of your back, rising to greet the wash of shades invading what remains of the bar.

Instantly, a form emerges from the din: Jason Klein, the self-styled Shadow Tyrant. Wreathed in a whirlwind of shade-mass, he unfurls vast, blinking wings of darkness, his grinning, pale face a stark contrast to that in which it is immersed. It is often hard to tell where his true body ends and the Umbra begins, if there is even a distinction anymore.

"Tamaz Israti! Why, I was *so* hoping that you would be present for Immeria's reprisal; after all, you were so instrumental!" chirps his rankling voice. A hand slips from the dark, proudly brandishing a gauntlet of darkened steel adorned with ruby spikes and obsidian claws. Your fingers tense around Veilbane's tang, tiny cavities deep within its amber beginning to incandesce with the Architect's light.

"I have nothing to say to you, Klein! Prepare to die!" you say, though you don't... move. The Umbra's presence almost weighs you in place. It gives him long enough to speak, sensing your hesitation as he does everything else about you now, bleeding your every thought into the Umbra as you once did the Worldspirit.

"Oh, you have LOTS to say to me, don't you? I would happily sit and listen--you needn't worry about the shades, I have them *thoroughly* in line, thanks to you! Besides, I'm sure the *filth* you would spew would just feed them... so why don't you indulge us?" He confidently struts toward the bar, his sick grin practically splitting his face. Shadow seeps from behind his teeth like bile and spills from his eyes like tears.

Watching you silently stand your ground as your summoned weapons begin to phase into reality behind you, he shakes his head and tuts.

"More artifice, hm? Throw enough design at a problem and eventually it will die, is that the thinking? How has that worked for you so far, dear prince? Besides... shouldn't you be thanking me? You wanted your creations to change the world, didn't you? It looks so malleable now, sodden with blood, doesn't it...?" He flexes his fingers in the gauntlet, admiring the fit as he doesn't even bother to look at you anymore. A moment of hubris in which you will strike.

His gaze catches on the suddenly ardent blade of light just a moment too late, as you heft it overhead by the tang like a javelin. "SHUT THE HELL UP AND DIE," you roar as you pitch the blade with the full force of your magic!

A blast of light bows back the dark as the spinning blade punches through the sound barrier, the wall of shades and his arm alike, prompting the Tyrant to howl in rage as threads of shadow shoot through the air and seize the remains of his hand. Spectacular though the gesture is, horror instantly dawns on your face--you missed. He reels back his twisting, extempore umbral limb and sends the gauntlet careening toward you as you barely duck out of the way, allowing it to crash into the wall behind you.

Klein snarls a command to his shades: "KILL IT, NOW," as you roll out from behind the bar. With a formless sea of claws and eyes rushing in, you reach out as Klein prepares for another strike... only to falter as Veilbane slams into his back, buckling him forward just long enough for you to capitalize.

Rushing forward, you rip Veilbane out of Klein as you pass in a spray of glowing red animus, immediately transferring the momentum into a wide, furious cleave through the animate darkness that your attendant arcane armaments quickly follow up on. Still infused with the Architect's grace, Veilbane's scouring light holds even the Umbra at bay for a time, especially while its commander recovers from the impact of the last two blows. As he steadies himself and begins to advance, he recoils at a swing from the warpick covering your flank and hisses, hesitating to step back into its reach.

"You must know this is hopeless, *prince*. Are you truly too blind to see a demise of your own design? Hm hm hm..." he laughs bitterly, lifting the gauntlet and clenching his fist about the brilliant ruby in its palm. The Umbra surges forward suddenly, claws pressing past the glow of your longsword and beginning to lash at you, one swipe dragging a deep crimson gouge into your face and another almost throwing itself into you, sending you back toward Klein, who projects his own shadow-mass beneath you, entangling your legs and dragging you off your feet.

Drooling sickly vermilion animus as he cackles over you, a hand bolts from the dark and pins your throat to the mire of shadow beneath you, tendrils of umbra scaling your body and sinking you deeper and deeper into cold, electrifying death. Above you, the gauntlet's spiked fist lifts for one final strike...

KRAK.

Klein is thrown off of you, screaming in horrified fury as the gauntlet practically explodes into a spray of shrapnel--some of which doesn't spare you, a few brutal shards of steel shredding your face and shoulder... but you're alive! Before you can register what happened, a rain of stones batter the Tyrant, ripping holes into his shadow form faster than he can repair them. He swings a hand, dragging a wall of shadow-mass in front of him in a panic.

Wiping blood from your face, you sit up to balk at Ascelina, now climbing atop the bar to work the room's stone debris into a raging whirlwind that relentlessly buffets the Tyrant. Your gaze locks with hers, and a spark of mutual relief spurs you both on!

Scurrying up to your feet, you scoop Veilbane off the floor and charge into Klein, sundering him with a cross blow mirrored by the flash of a magical blade striking down onto his other shoulder. As he's carved apart into formless shade, the Umbra itself arcs toward you in the vague shape of a claw as he tries to retreat into it, but Ascelina ducks into its path and meets it with her steel fist, scattering it with her own empowered blow!

Though the Umbra rushes in to fill his form back in as each time before, and he seems to be preparing for another strike, Klein suddenly begins to look around frantically, feeling a familiar cold recede in favor of a nightmarish chill. The shadow winding him back together starts to unravel, as a mound of claws and eyes begin to drag him down. "No, no, NO! You can't-- wh--WAIT--PLEASE--"

Having long since lost its anchor to this world, the Umbra collapses into a brilliant and disgusting slip of crimson light, a mess of limbs and panicked red eyes rolling over each other and bleeding away. A loud, otherworldly pop punctuates its recession, allowing the glint of the stars to once more overlook the smoldering town. Incredulous that you're alive and delighted that Ascelina is, you throw yourself into Ascelina hard enough to almost bowl her over, a chaotic mixture of laughter and sobbing practically bursting out of you as you bury your face into her shoulder and squeeze her for dear life.

Looking past your shoulder, and at the smoke sifting through the treeline, she gently squeezes you in turn, shutting her eyes tight and hiding her face against you.

"I... I'm so sorry, Ascelina..." you stammer out.

"Dear... it's okay... it's over now. We--ah--we should... look for others," she says solemnly, patting your shoulder.

Sniffling, you swallow heavily and nod, though your arms still hold onto her like a bear trap for just a moment longer than they should. "Uh... Tom, you good?" you say, casting a glance toward the bar.

A dusty thumbs-up sticks out over it.