1559年11月15日 22:00?
As the group led by
Hashinara Yoshitakatomo left the
Baharnan Library, they were cautioned first by
Chhean the Curator not to take any books off the premises. That put an end to
Fubuki's study of the
Baharnan language, but she* had established a small foundational vocabulary by that point.
Aotsuki Tsukamoto had his own reservations in leaving as well. He'd seen
Oyama Hikari eyeing that
Only Accurate Map of the Dreamlands so tantalizingly displayed in the center of the hall. So far he'd been able to deflect any thefts, but Aotsuki eventually decided that if Hikari wanted to tangle with Chhean and the fierce-looking
Dragon skeleton under her contol,
that was their business.
Leaving that towering canyon of books behind them, the three set off on the short road to the
Ruins of Tyrhhia.
It was not a long distance to circumvent
Lake Yath. Perhaps for mere mortals it would have taken longer, but the three had decided not to bring any of their other allies
for fear of exposing them to the Ruins' notorious corruptive effects. The temperature steadily dropped as they approached. Along the way, Fubuki busied herself* by filling up a jug with blood,
draining it from her* own veins by regenerative measure until she* had a full gallon's worth. When Hashinara Yoshitakatomo and her* retainers stood at the entrance to the ruins less than an hour later, fine snow dusted the ground and an unearthly chill hung in the air.
Nothing attacked them immediately, there on the cliffs above cold Yath below, but the crumbling stonework was not entirely devoid of life either. Pale figures, hunched like beasts, crept around in the shadows and glared at the intruders from the lee of ruined walls. Like men, but with hideously elongated faces and jagged teeth, they did not seem aggressive; more cautious. Further within, two of the monsters feasted upon what looked like a fallen woman's corpse, garbed all in black silk.
Upon seeing these warped denizens, Yoshitakatomo's seemingly endless arcane knowledge came once again to her* aid.
These were not Wamps, but Ghouls. Anywhere men had, in times of great desperation, turned upon each other for food, there too were ghouls. Often the remnants of long-dead civilizations, these undead creatures' reliance on sapient flesh to sustain their blasphemous bodies had transformed them into wretches, not far removed from a beast. Although abhorrent in nature, ghouls were not normally aggressive unless cornered or starving. These appeared to be neither, so the party could likely dismiss them as an immediate threat. While Yoshitakatomo explained this to her* companions,
Tama began blinking quite furiously.
All of them had, by that point, felt the odd prickle around their eyes. Perhaps it had been the cold. When tears of blood began streaming down poor Tama's face, however, they could no longer dismiss it as such. Some malign presence was causing her to, quite painlessly, cry her very life from her eyes. The pale creatures within the ruins were Ghouls, not Wamps, so it could not be them. That long, white form streaming from the shadows at Tama, six arms open wide to accept its prey... that was a Wamp.
Aotsuki
reacted on pure protective instinct. Raising his crested shield, he deflected the Wamp's charge with such adroitness that the creature turned in on itself in response. Eight slender, all-too-human limbs tangled up amongst themselves, sending the beast to the ground in a knot of bloodless flesh. Aotsuki took in the elongated head, hidden amidst stands of hair the same color as its skin. Its hands and general form were uncomfortably familiar in their shape, but it seemed grossly elongated, surely measuring a good ten feet from its head to the tip of its sinuous tail. With a mixture of
disgust and righteous rage, Aotsuki took advantage of the Wamp's fall.
Tsurugi vanished from his side, reappearing in his hand as
Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi even as he chopped downward. The blow caught the flailing creature in the neck. Although not sufficient to chop through its spine, the Wamp twisted in silent pain before shuddering to stillness. A translucent, viscous liquid began to leak from wound. From the ruins around them, the other Wamps began to sing in ghostly, ephemeral tones.
That was one slain already, but as crimson tears continued to leak from Tama's eyes, the risk to their allies seemed real. Fubuki took action next, stepping forward and decisively chopping off the fallen Wamp's head. It wasn't entirely clear whether such measures were necessary but, recalling
Sonisay Wamp-Slayer's words about removing their heads, Fubuki
decided not to take the chance. She* proceeded to block her* own hearing with a quick alteration to the ears, guarding against the possibility that this ill effect was carried on the song itself. From there, they relied upon
Kagami's supernatural discernment to find the rest of their hidden targets. Five Wamps crowded the ruins in all, hiding in shadows or slinking behind snow-dusted walls. What's more, Kagami quickly brought it to Aotsuki's attention that the woman further up in the ruins, presumed by all of them long-dead, was in fact breathing.
The mystical realm laid itself bare before Yoshitakatomo's inhuman eyes, showing something powerful and amorphous lurking beneath the center of the ruins. The ghoul-ravaged woman, too, seemed to hold within her a significant bank of magical energy. She too must be an occultist of some sort, and this caught Yoshitakatomo's attention. With a wave of her* hand, the earth itself rose and shattered
in its rush to obey. Soon a set of pristine stairs lay beneath her* feet, leading comfortably up to the previously unreachable heights of the ruins.
Horrid Wamps still lurked on every side, so the three heroes banded together and moved as one. Huddled close to Aotsuki and the protective aura of his faith, they ascended the stairs and approached the woman's body. By this point, all of the ghouls hidden about the necropolis were firmly under Yoshitakatomo's necromantic hand. Those two which had until then been feasting upon the fallen body fled in the wake of their new master, while others turned their attention to flinging themselves at a Wamp. Eventually, perhaps, they would overwhelm one of the greater predators with their numbers alone. A fine target presented itself in an unaware Wamp, even now soaking its lank hair in the blood so
subtly placed by Fubuki to distract the thing.
As the party approached the center, their malady spread to Aotsuki, Kagami, and Fubuki. All of them could feel their stamina fleeing by measure while blood poured out from their eyes. With the scavengers fled, the woman on the ground was revealed to be fair of skin and feature, wearing what they recognized from their dealings with
Sancta Sedes as a nun's outfit. She looked to be in remarkably good condition for someone who had been gnawed upon by the rabid undead. Only shallow wounds marred her exposed skin; those and a stylized tattoo in the shape of an eye pained upon one scandalously uncovered thigh. Aotsuki still couldn't tell if the woman was dead or merely unconscious, but he asked Kagami to
perform a light healing upon her regardless. In a moment, the victim's eyes fluttered open. Her voice hoarse, she shouted something to the uncaring winds of Tyrhhia.
Somehow, perhaps by the sheer primal longing in her tones, Aotsuki understood her meaning. Taking a measure of the party's water rations, he
performed that most basic of miracles. So provided with a bounty of wine, the strange nun downed it greedily. She seemed revitalized from the drink, climbing to her feet despite her lingering injuries. Unfortunately, the party did not seem to share a language with the stranger. Fubuki might have recognized it as
Trufflish, had she* not blocked her* own ears not a minute ago. By means of gesture and tone, Aotsuki was able to convince her to come with them, a suggestion she quite literally embraced by throwing her arms about her handsome savior.
On the southern edge of their piece of the ruins, the collected Ghouls had somehow
successfully taken down a Wamp. One scavenger, slightly larger and lankier than the others, jumped up in an impressive display of skill, bringing their foe to the ground in a headlock that collected its limbs together to a useless bundle. So incapacitated, the other ghouls begrudgingly beat it to death with their bare hands. While Aotsuki and Fubuki took their rescue away from the center of the ruins and, hopefully, away from the corruptive influence causing them to cry blood, Yoshitakatomo remained steady. Perhaps it was because she* had died so recently and was now a lich, but the risen Princess-
Daimyō seemed unaffected by the Wamps' presence. A slight pricking at her eyes was all that bothered her* as they sought to draw forth blood that was not there.
Summoned by its new master, the Ghoul which had shown such strength in pinning a Wamp approached pensive Yoshitakatomo. It could speak, displaying a surprisingly broad vocabulary, and introduced itself as
Elisha, eldest of these Ghouls. Although Yoshitakatomo sought the secret beneath these ruins, some power buried deep below, Elisha could not help. They had lived here since before memory, but after Tyrhhia fell. It was more a matter of
symbiosis with the Wamps. Those pale beasts drained the blood from any foolhardy enough to brave the ruins in search of treasure, leaving husks for the Ghouls to feast upon. As bloodless undead and non-sapient beasts respectively, neither species was within the other's realm of prey. It had been a fine arrangement until Yoshitakatomo had come along and enforced her* new authority by immediately disrupting it. The necromancer
did not, however, immediately release that control. They would be back, she* promised, with a sacrifice to place upon the magic circle she* had discerned in the center of the ruins. Perhaps an offering of blood, so valued in this realm, would persuade the chiseled goat heads there to give up the ruins' secrets.
Meanwhile, Aotsuki and Fubuki were chatting with their new companion. Miraculously, she seemed to have picked up the Japanese language. Or perhaps it was merely a result of Yoshitakatomo's belated magic. Regardless, the nun was able to introduce herself as
Raspberry Pudding, a wandering Holy Woman from the
Truffle Tsardom. As for what she was doing near-death within snowy ruins on the
Isle of Oriab, she couldn't say. If she were to guess, Raspberry Pudding ventured, someone had probably been trying to kill her again. As an influential figure in the Tsardom and
Petra I's close adviser, she had no shortage of enemies. This one had been a strange man in a hat, but when it came to
Dreamers and their usual mode of dress, that narrowed it down very little. The way the strange nun described it, Aotsuki and Fubuki got the impression that failed assassinations were a regular occurrence for "sweet little Raspberry Pudding."
Although they'd been away from the ruins' center for a time now, Fubuki's eyes chose this moment to begin spontaneously bleeding once again. With whatever sense it used to detect prey, a nearby Wamp caught wind of this and launched itself, without hesitation, toward the collected three. It seemed for a moment as though Aotsuki wouldn't be quite quick enough. His shield was just shy of blocking the thing's six grasping arms. Then, in a heroic burst of energy, he pushed the last few inches and blasted their foe away. Like the first, this one tangled itself in its own limbs. It kept its feet, however, and prowled just at the edge of their reach, looking for an opening.
To the surprise of her new companions, Raspberry Pudding reacted immediately. Reciting a prayer in Trufflish, she thrust her crucifix forward with great fervor at the slinking Wamp. When
Mariléne Leclair had done this during her fight against
Maxim at the tournament, nothing was achieved. This result could not be more different. A blinding beam of light erupted from the cross in Raspberry Pudding's hand, tapering outward until it encompassed the entirety of the Wamp's shrouded head in white luminance. When it was gone, everything upward of base of the creature's neck was utterly obliterated. Only a smoldering stump remained as the Wamp's body teetered, then thudded to the ground, punctuated by Raspberry's confident "Amen."
Suitably impressed, Aotsuki inquired as to where the Wandering Holy Woman would be wandering to after this incident. She had been too long hiding out in the
Dreamlands, Raspberry Pudding suggested, and so would make back for the Tsardom and her role there. When told that they had someone who could create portals nearby, Raspberry politely declined. Who knows where she would end up if she passed through a portal on Oriab, after all. No, to make it back to the Tsardom, she would need to find a spellcaster capable of piercing the Veil of Sleep in
Oonai. Until they reached Baharna once again, however, she would travel with them.
Yoshitakatomo had rejoined them by that point, and Fubuki was
making herself* useful by conjuring up a wagon and then hitching herself* to it in the body of a great black fox. With the
three Wamp corpses loaded into it, it would no doubt be a slightly slower but quite smooth journey back to the port. What other Wamps lurked here had already fled or hidden, and so the party bid their farewell to the Ruins of Tyrhhia... for now. The secrets of this place yet eluded her*, and Yoshitakatomo
swore that she* would return and claim them.
Comments