It begins. (Events with in A Calling.)

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Gargauth

The Hidden Lord
The portal snapped shut, it's exhausted yawn becoming nothing more than empty space in the halls of Dark Avalon. No other place like it existed, Gargauths kingdom on the prime. A shadow on Ayenee and a beacon to mortal fantasies and dreams. Where through twisted promises and gifts one could be anything they desired.

It was here Lim'Dul would meet his almighty.

From the walls it squirmed, from flesh and bone it crawled, and from garbs it slithered, the Warp. Second nature to Gargauth alone, fed from planes existant to none other, pandemonium, a gift from The Over-God Chaos himself, and rewarded to the faithful of the broken horn, or were his faithful rewarded to it?

Each step radiated, crackled with this monstrousity, echoing to an orchestra that never ceased to perform, silken robes dragging so far behind whilst ebon housed flesh that left one to wonder what lie beneath? An unfelt breeze digressed against that magnificent form, this entity of terror leaving those who stood in witness to see the non existance of his form beneath, yet bare site unto that pearlic white iri' framed by a twisting of flesh that some would call a face, a face that at one time resembled a pitfiend, the tenth lord of baator in another life, and perhapse still, and at other times there were no facial features, just the raw, unadulterated crackle of the warp.

The masque of Gargauth at it's finest, his unique form of disguise took it's place, the master of deception, the lord of lies. He was as Lim-Dul might remember him. Young and handsome, old and decrepit, wrinkled and deformed, his physique was boundless. The appeals of Lim'Dul's fancy would be met in the end of his approach, leaving Lim'Dul to stare unto The Hidden Lord himself.

Basking from that ancient being swelled an unseen aura, negativity. Meant only to reduce those with in his presence into unease and subjugation, open to suggestion.

"You've yet to disappoint me Lim'Dul. But another has." Soft yet wreaking of all things vile, his voice touched the ears of the living and the un-living for the first time in untold ages.

That aura would undoubtedly have it's effect, from those words alone, eagerness to please The Hidden Lord, unwilling to accept disappointment. Housed with in the walls of Dark Avalon his influence was supreme, an environment catered to him and him alone, yet home to his faithful and so many more.
 
And so he appears.

Appears where, exactly, he does not know. Striding forth from the portal mouth with the same confidence born of ambition and desperation...the lich Lim-Dul doesn't really care where he was going to end up.

Yet only a few moments after his arrival, he realizes that here is exactly where he wanted to be.

The fabled home to the Hidden Lord himself, a place that had eluded the lich despite his many attempts to divine its location. Here, a pinnacle of great evil and corruption, is where he would find an answer to his call. Indeed, the very air roiled with power...crackling with the chaotic maddness that comprised the mysterious Warp.

The power...

Speaking ever so softly to himself...

"At last..."

Letting his bony arms drop to his sides, he would stride with purpose through the complex. It would only be after a few steps that he would realize that he was not alone, that another was also present.

It must be him.

Stopping in his tracks, he would stand motionless and let the avatar(if indeed that was what it was, Lim-Dul never truly gauged Gargauth among the other dieties) come towards him.

Either through sheer habit or willingness to play the part he figured would grant him the greatest reward, he slightly bowed his head...and then his entire person...in respect as the god approached.

And Gargauth spoke.

Please him? Fair enough, what little the lich had done in his diminished capacity might as well of consisted as an act to the Hidden Lord. Gargauth had been gone for too long, Lim-Dul doubted what he actually did mattered.

Whatever influence the god possessed in his own realm was undoubtedly undeniable, yet decades of the lack of living emotions-save for his blistering hate and rage that occasionally took him-along with unlife's unique ability to render one immune to mind influencing effects would indeed make the resulting fervor to the god's whims less than optimal.

Yet it really didn't matter. The promise of power, of greatness, that he was given so long ago...firs through Gargauth's prophet, and then by the Hidden Lord himself...would certainly send the lich into all manner of adoration and supplication just so long as he were given what he sought.

After all, whether it was for folly or not, the purpose of this call was not for Gargauth's wishes.

It was for his own.

And so Lim-Dul would speak...

"Great Lord, I am not worthy of your presence or your praise... Let me be the first to greet you, on this, your return to Ayenee. "
 
Skyler Bloodtide

Skyler had been following Lim-Dul ever since he left that cave. He'd stayed hidden within the Shadow Realms, but tracking the lich's impression had been a simple task. It was only when the Lich jumped through a magical portal that Skyler almost lost him.

As Lim-Dul's impression left existence from one dimension and reappeared in the next, Skyler had to trace the threads of the portal as it was closing to find the right destination. But when that destination became apparent, Skyler decided to make his presence known. The lich and the dark lord would undoubtedly be immediately aware of his presence as Skyler rose up out of Lim-Dul's own shadow.

"So, this is what you've been mumbling about..." Skyler said absently as he looked around the place and finally focused on Gargauth himself. This being was definitely one of the great ones. Skyler had been in the presence of greatness before. Perhaps this time would go better than the last... he knew that he was in significant danger here.

"Greetings, m'lord." he says as he steps forward, past Lim-Dul. "I hope you will forgive me for intruding. My name is Skyler. I followed your pet lich here, and I'm interested in joining you, if you would have me."
 
Silence was dead today, as was the light. Colorless features shifted from onyx to tan against the pin points of white that made their home with in the epicenter of his facial construction.

A boney hand lifted before him, three fingers and a thumb impressing against the structure of his palm leaving only the index finger leveled against Skyler. Gargauth spoke. His voice no true language, but pictures with in the mind of his subject, dialogue made known through projections alone. That finger serving as the means of forcing, yes forcing Skyler away from him, an unfathomable grip, unbreakable in Dark Avalon, where Gargauth was supreme. "For my benefit or yours...?"

Flesh began to dance over his facial construction, what Skyler at one time thought Gargauth may appear as, what he imagined The Hidden Lord to resemble or what he hoped to see would be seen, an illusion to ease the mind with in the presence of something so overwhelming that blindness or death were a certainty. More than one cutter have met their end through offending him in the past.

"As humbling as your words are...I can not be decieved. You are not feal, I was called for one purpose alone, a reward. However.." The reservations of his cloak shifted from the onyx of old into the red of his teachings, the red cloth, his foot, imageless became talonesque and then human in the stride that took him closer to the Lich, Lim'Dul "Greed is an attribute I can admire, do you remember the.. seventh and eighth commandment of the broken horn?"

The shadows of cloak wained in the light, the spectacle that was the warp, churning against the red cloth, masking his face in the silverine contort of power. "Thou shall betray thy fellow man, thou shall decieve all those about thee. Am I your fellow man? Am I someone to be decieved?"

That hand that at one time had been leveled 'pon Skyler came down, easin' it's bony grasp past the face of Lim'Dul, extending The Gargain unto one of his own.

Skyler was not forgotten, the vampire kin would find himself seemingly...trapped. The shadows were gone, their existence extinguished in the presence of the warp, there were no doors, there were no windows and with the lowering of his hand it seemed as if all outer influences were dismissed. "What of this one?" His aura, that negativity never ceased to corrupt the hearts and minds of those it touched, perhapse people like Lim'Dul would be less than receptive to it, but they were few and far between, Skyler had been doused in it since his arrival.

"Sune..." That word spanned planes, constructed pattersn over the vastness of The Multiverse, he didn't call her, he didn't contact her, he located her, and he found her, in the capital, where that portal still remained, a one way ticket to Dark Avalon.
 
Rage seethed up within the lich.

No! This is not how it was supposed to be!

He was owed this. He had held out far, far too long to play word games... But perhaps-

The lich decided, supressing his normal desires to rage about and unleash randomly(which was probably both foolish and unwise in this case), to instead act the part and...-

What was this!?

The same fool that had discovered him, somehow, hiding while waiting for his Calling to come into effect. How this fool had managed to follow himself to this place despite the many extradimensional transportations he's been through...

While it would take some time to discern the answer to that question, through proper study and analysis of whatever arts Skyler employed, the lich's current course of action was of a far more direct sort.

Taking several paces back from Gargauth and Skyler, as was common practice for any combat-wary magic user, the lich declaimed a single syllable of terrible power....

...whereupon a corona of darkness rose up about his person, the awakenings to one of many potent magics available to such a practiced sorcerer such as he...

...where he would then speak,

"Insolent fool...you tred in places not for your kind. Tremble before what you witness now..."

Looking to Gargauth briefly before turning back to Skyler, Lim-Dul assumed that any diety aligned to the more Chaotic trends as the Hidden Lord would simply reduce Skyler to ashes for the intrusion.

"...For it is indeed your last...."
 
Skyler Bloodtide

Skyler was no vampire kin. He was Demon-blooded. His soul had been dragged through the pits of hell, branded by the mark of Lucifer, and kissed by his daughter.

In reply to Gargauth's question, Skyler said "For my benefit. Although I wouldn't bother presenting the offer to you if I didn't think you could gain from it as well."

As for the negativity of Gargauth's presence, it did affect Skyler. Skyler's own corrupted ideas multiplied and propogated within his heart and soul as they interacted with the power of the Dark Lord. And Skyler found himself painfully smiling at the myriad of broken visions dancing through his mind. Deception, destruction, domination. All of it seemed to suit Skyler just fine. His own twisted world view seemed to be brought into perfect focus now that he had found the one being capable of bringing it all to bear upon the realm of Ayenee.

Turning to the lich, Lim'Dul, Skyler's mouth twisted into a grin "Do you know my kind? You are a pitiful husk of unlife, bound solely by magic to this world. Do you know what hell feels like? You don't know death. You have probably forgotten life." As Skyler speaks, the color in his eyes drains out until only a black void is left. From deep inside that emptiness, a red dot of light sparks into life, and burns with the fire of hell, reflecting the path through which Skyler's soul was born.

"Lich, you seem to be more out of place any myself. You are an abomination to life and death. My life will be decided by the Dark Lord. Not by you."
 
Remained. Listening, watching and waiting. Unmoving, how dare he, enter his abode with this arrogance of supremacy, how dare he interrupt meetings such as theese, where more important matters were to be contested and tended too, a fight would benefit noone on this night.

Skyler's arrogance would pay off tonight, or would it? "Waite...." His voice emanated, vocally shaking the minds of those in attendance. Gargauth approached, and in that epic stride the weelings of theese two would be combatants shied away, as if in abject terror of The Hidden Lords approach. There would be no blood letting tonight.

"I may have...a use for you.. if only you allow yourself to kneel....become knighted in my clergy.."

Lim'Dul... he could feel the rage, he could feel the seathing anger that erupted with in a vessel so deserving, and his time would come, for The Hidden Lord promised.

And appearing with in his right hand, the fist of The Lord Who Watches a far darker version of Excalibur was brandished unto his grasp, a weapon of ones demise, or perhapse an annointance into the red cloth.
 
Skyler Bloodtide

Giving one last glance to Lim'Dul, to ensure he wasn't about to attempt something, Skyler looks into the eyes of Gargauth. "No clergy of man would have me. The taint on my soul is too black for their prayers to wash clean. No pit inside of hell would accept me. The fire within burns too hot for the demons to endure.

But for the Dark Lord, neither matters. I will be your knight."

Skyler bows his head and kneels before Gargauth.
 
The whites of oblivion, fathomless pin-points watched the fealty of this creature. He knew nothing of The Hidden Lord, his past, his present and his future. All he knew was power and what could be obtained through service, to become something far greater than he could ever achieve alone. Skyler dreamed.

And that was the deception of The Hidden Lord, the volumes by which he lived and or wrote.

Lowered, pressed, an indication of un-ease, a sense of dread sweapt from the flat of this blade into the very core of Skyler's existence from where it rest, the left shoulder of Skyler Bloodtide.

A hilt sculpted of elven flesh and bone, a blade smote from metal unknown to this multiverse, a weapon devised for a being of untold treachery and power, fit for Gargauth.

How easy it would be to end this man's life, how simple a swipe of the sword could behead this willing clergy-man. A flick of his wrist, there would be nothing Skyler could do..nothing..

"Your threats and insults were empty...weren't they?"

Skyler could feel the flat of brandished darkness heavying it's toll 'pon his shoulder, and yet at the same time he could feel the bite, the sting of it's edge easing into the surface of his neck, a flick is all it would take.

But how does one answer that question, the god of deciet and lies has no morals, only commandments by which his faithful live to server. The answer lie with in that codex of virtue, the religion of The Hidden Lord.
 
Skyler Bloodtide

"Yes, m'lord." replies Skyler. And it was unlikely that even Gargauth could tell if he was telling the truth, or lying. For the reality was that he was doing both. Skyler had no intentions of attacking Gargauth, but if Lim'Dul did something foolish, SKyler would have no problems making good on his threats towards the lich.
 
"Thou shall murder for personal gain, excluding others of the faith,
unless ordered upon to do so."

Voices, redundancy in their truest form repeated that line time and again, a shadow in the background of his spoken word. "The third teaching of The Hidden Lord, break it and I will....crush...you...like...a..bug..."

That runic sword, slid against the side of Skyler's neck, never once deepening it's impression as it was slowly, so slowly removed from the side of this creatures neck. An action that was certain to exhaust the life from any mere mortal, but how would Skyler fair?

"If you live.." His voice chided the demon-kin knelt before him. "Clean your blood from my floor, and then you will be allowed to serve the broken horn." Perhapse unknown to Skyler the very wound inflicted by that dark sword also seathed with something left behind.

Then Gargauth turned, that sweeping cloak of the richest red silk drifting from the here and now, the floor and air to a resilient calm at his feet, he approached Lim'Dul, Skyler but a thought in the back of his head.
 
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Skyler Bloodtide

Skyler's jaw tightens as the blade cuts into his neck. He can feel the warm blood from the cut beginning to flow down his neck, shoulder, and torso. Skyler closes his eyes and focuses on ignoring the pain. He brings his hand up to staunch the flow of blood while he waits for the wound to close. Skyler did heal faster than normal people, but it would take a bit of time. Skyler had to focus on remaining conscious until the blood clotted enough so that he stopped losing it. It took several moments before the bleeding even slowed down. Skyler felt slightly light-headed. He was glad that he was already kneeling so he wouldn't have to sit down while the tissue knitted together.

Eventually, the blood clotted and the bleeding stopped. Skyler removed his hand, revealing a raw wound in the first stages of healing. Its a good thing the cut was so clean, otherwise, it might have been worse. Skyler, looked at the blood that had dripped on the floor. There wasn't much. Most of it had soaked into Skyler's clothing. But he had been set with the task to clean it.

Skyler thought for a minute of how. He toyed with the idea of using the lich's rotted robes as a rag. But he didn't want to provoke a fight just now. He couldn't just burn the blood away. No fire would damage it. In the end, Skyler took off his own shirt and used it as a rag. He sopped up his own bodily fluids, and then looks up at Gargauth. "Does that meet your satisfaction?"
 
And so he watches.

A demon, eh? Off the top of the lich's mind, he could list off a dozen spells that would banish this Skyler to some hell for thousands of years...or bind him into servitude...or cause his blood to boil....bones to liquify...

It is this train of thought the lich ponders while the Hidden Lord converses with the demon. Indeed, the lich wondered if his intervention would be necessary being that, in this very place, the god could do whatever he wished.

It is with great suprise that Lim-Dul finds he is letting Skyler live.

Yet he says nothing. The very thought of earning displeasure from the diety for saying something that went against the Hidden Lord's agenda could cost him everything he sought.

And so when Gargauth turns to him, he meets his gaze with his own dead visage and waits...
 
"Lim'Dul..."

the spoken word of that name was drawn out in a verbal contest with reality.

"Along time ago...I promised you something..." expressionless face unchanging, as unemotional as the harshness of the book the lich now held in hand, the Gargain.

"And you will recieve it.."

Those fingers, ever changing talons twisting into the stature of humanoid didgits digressed down the curtain like fabric of the red cloth. "Find the cultists of the olde ones, I can not make Ayenee welcoming to my return, but I can make it beg me... And when we prevail, you will be left with out want, you will have it all."

Skylers words went unheeded, lost in thought, the delusion of what he proposed, the olde ones...did they even exist, and if they did...could he control them?
 
Cultists of the old ones?

Of what did Gargauth speak?

Hesitantly, the lich quickly remembers the great tome he had been given...the unholy Gargain, a terrible text containing the teachings of the Hidden Lord himself.

Perhaps the book has answers to his questions, yes...

Ignoring Skyler as if he didn't exist, save for the event he did something stupid and attempted to attack the lich, Lim-Dul spoke...

"Old Ones? What want could you possibly require from them?"
 
"What I want...or require of them should not matter to you. All that should matter to you is the task I have set, but...I want them to make Ayenee bleed and burn. I want them to make Ayenee seek out the red cloth for salvation, and then...I will save them."

Devious intent igniting in those shallow pits of white. "Don't disappoint me."
 
Skyler Bloodtide

Skyler stood back up, and coughed politely to remind Lord Gargauth that he was still here. "What would you have me do, m'Lord?"
 
So be it.

Lim-Dul would nod, slightly, and take several steps back before rasping the words of magic to take him away from this place. Having no idea whether Gargauth's realm was sealed away and his spell would fail...well...he was far too irritated to care at the moment.

To be required to perform some sort of errand-boy herald-like task was infuriating to the lich. He had called up the god in the mindset he would be given the power and greatness long overdue to himself.

Obviously not the case.

And yet, sad as it is, the lich simply went along with the Hidden Lord's agenda. He wanted the power. Wanted it so badly, more than anything he ever desired before, that he was willing to go to any end to achieve that which he craved.

So he would find these "Olde Ones". Perhaps he reffered to those followers of Nyst...or others....it did not matter.

Lim-Dul would present them the option to service under Gargauth's name...or they would perish.
 
But where in all the realms would he find these creatures? These miserable, hidden and forgotten cultists of forgotten deities? The Hidden Lord gave him naught many clues, but perhaps Lim-Dul didn't need any.

In a distant place, cloistered among walls of thorns and dripping stones oozing some fetid, phosphorescent bile sat a lonely thing whispering to itself and an empty space between throbbing paws.

Beneath the moon it waited, and in the depths of an alien mind a calling radiated. It knew not of what Garguath was, nor did it care. It had been given a directive from something it could not understand, but served with a bloodlust and fervor unknown in any sane realm. It twisted its cloth-wrapped hands around a central space before it, generating something of a blur in the air within that space.

Within that sphere came a gurgle in the fabric of space, a spewing forth of a Madman's will and an inhuman urging. Something cracked, and the air split like burning paper splitting under heinous flames. Within that imagery did not exiwst, only the urging and a vague, fathomless ululation.

It called. Flutes and shrieking and gibbering, all twisted into a faint background noise that the Thing on the hilltop reached toward.s Its conciousness recieded, and with all the arcane blasphemies it posessed it put a call into the voidless expanse beyond the rip.

An image lingered then grew, radiated up into the planes of reality and sought its goal. The cloth-wrapped monstrocity knew now who possessed the item it desired, and the itme itself knew who called it from slumber.

----

Somewhere, from something, Lim-Dul might feel a tremor in his own reality. A subtle urging to reclaim something, to hold something he posessed. It would temper the mad mind of the Lich Lord and bend it towards its goal, for the Calling could not be ignored.

An urge to hold again that radiant blue Meteorite that shattered the Lich's castle, long ago. It pulled and tugged and writhed wherever it sat, aching to be heard.
 
When the lich was gone, when the void was sealed, when there was nothing to disturb him, nothing but Skyler, The Hidden Lord turned. That face of humanity wreaking havoc on the very image of disgust he once portrayed, lips twisted, deteriorated and reformed, teeth melting and growing twisted with in that maw of destitute horror.

He spoke with the voices of many, in simultaneous terror it spanned the continents of theese walls, plaguing the mindset of Skyler, reducing this so called confidence to nothing but a quivering ray of hope in the deepest bowels of that beating heart.

"Find my Sune, kill the man who courts her, Scorn DarkTide.. And watch...the lich, if he has what I assume he does bring it to me..A radiant blue shard..."

Turning from Skyler he looked towards the windows that lead to a land beautiful yet horrid. Green pasteurs nothing more than a blanket masking the rivers of blood that soaked the land. He spoke one more time.

"Our conversation is for privileged ears and the penalty for it's leak..will be your demise."

And with the completion of those words Skyler would begin to feel the pull, something he could not fathom, something he could not resist, for Skyler was in the domain of a god among fiends. It tore him from The Hidden Lords presence, Skyler would find himself on the outskirts of the capital.
 
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