Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Page 1

Wyrena found herself struggling against the bonds that held her fast to the iron chair on which she sat. Around the edges of her consciousness, the muted sights and sounds of a small unfurnished stone room impinged upon her senses, giving scant answer to the question which distracted her focus from time to time from the all-important task of freeing herself from the sticky white strands holding her: Where was she?

Porphyria watched the Justicar's struggles with amusement; Wyrena's bonds were spidersilk granted by the divine power of Ygelleth Herself, and it would take hours of struggling and straining just to loosen them. Wyrena's elven features betrayed her fear; sweat had matted her chestnut-brown hair into snakelike strands, and her deep blue eyes were opened wide with the strain of her efforts. Idly, Porphyria ran her fingers over the equipment she had stripped from Wyrena while the Justicar lay unconscious -- all of it was blessed by the order-god Tyr, and all of it was equally useless out of the hands of a similarly-anointed Justicar. Porphyria decided that she had given the Justicar enough time to exhaust herself, and allowed the psychic field which cloaked her presence from the awareness of the Justicar to drop.

Wyrena gasped as the figure before her faded into view; it was as if an image that had long been before her eyes had suddenly reasserted itself in her mind after a strange and disquieting absence. The figure was a tall, apparently elven woman with bright blue skin which was covered in strange runes; her narrowed, pure-black eyes were also speckled with the same runes, all of which slowly shifted form. The figure's long blood-red hair was reflected in the pure-golden feathers of wings which sprouted from her back and hung gracefully-folded. An aura of darkness surrounded the figure, dimming the lights around it, and making her features all the more difficult to discern for certain -- the Justicar doubted that she would be able to see the figure at all, if not for her elven ability to see in the dark. The dark figure moved forward slowly, until she was scant dimins from the Justicar's chair. "My name is Porphyria, and I've brought you here because you hold some information that I would like to know. But first, I would like to know to whom I am speaking. After all, there's no reason for us not to be friendly."

"Huh?" Wyrena asked, still attempting to process the sudden appearance of the frightening figure before her. She quickly regained her wits, "If you want to be my friend, let me go. I won't cooperate with you."

Porphyria chuckled softly, "Your cooperation is not really needed, although it would make things nominally easier, Wyrena." Porphyria caught the flicker of surprise that crossed the Justicar's eyes as she heard her name spoken. "I can simply pluck the answer from your mind. I knew your name just after I asked the question -- you spoke your name in your thoughts, loudly enough for me to hear. So, let's both just get this over with quickly and easily, and we'll both get what we want. You tell me what I need to know, and you go home."

1 comment:

  1. Sweetness! Will there be an Arc crossover? I love the story and the blog, keep at it!

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