Shadow Contracts (for Ixis Naugus)

[conjuredskies]

Deep in the Parkland woods, twilight holds sway despite the early hour. The crumbling grey walls rise high and forbidding from the outside, but the heavy door stands ajar and swings open noiselessly when pushed – there’s fresh oil on the hinges.

Inside lies a great courtyard surrounded by a columned portico, with narrow doorways leading off into more dark corners. In the center, however, is a wide well with a low stone edge. Off to one side, its hooded summoner waits. Felix has spread a mat over the cracked paving stones, and now sits cross-legged beside his knapsack, picking over a few implements and books, checking the edge of a steel dagger. Aside from his hood, the conjurer has abandoned the legionary uniform for plainer leather armor, worn and mended from long use.

It’s been very quiet for some time. Just the skittering of breeze-blown leaves and birdsong drifting over the walls. Felix is quick to look up at a new presence.

Comments

[conjuredskies]

There’s some discussion, right now, about where to put the gem. The younger and more impressionable pair definitely want it to be sealed in the big vault; their elder has just enough sense not to want to tamper with the protections. Somewhat less sensibly (perhaps) she’s reminding them that the Cowl of Nocturnal is being kept in there, and they can’t risk the corruption of exposure to such a dark artifact.

She’d rather just put the gem into the sealed display case where there are already three black soul gems. ‘To wait for purification’, she says. Nearby is a nearly complete set of daedric armor looming black and blood-red on its stand; an ugly black mace on another, a gnarled wooden staff in the center of an unnecessarily large (and smelly) cage. Each is warded with more simple runes (though an ordinary thief, one imagines, could easily be killed by even these precautions).

Felix, in the meantime, has made his way downstairs: he’s lurking outside the door and trying to peek through the crack to see if he can sneak in. He pushes it carefully, but it starts to creak once it’s open a crack, making one of the Vigilants jump and look around nervously. Blast! He retreats a step to try and come up with a new plan, listening in case they actually come investigate.

[ixis]

Naugus knows how to bide his time. For years, decades, if need be. But that doesn't mean he knows how to be patient in the more immediate frame of time. It's not long before he's grown antsy in the dark, especially surrounded by all these curious objects! He wants to examine them! But he feels he might not be able to move as freely as he'd care to in said examination, not with these idiot Vigilants still sitting around, nattering about nothing that matters.

They've confirmed at least verbally that the item they want is under lock and key (and ward) of the largest doors, but that's given little more than a passing thought to the impetuous wizard. He's distracted now by his curiosity and his impatience to sate it. The door they came through gives a creak, making him look towards it as well as one of the guards, and that makes Naugus decide to act.

Was there ever an order to do this without lethal means? That question only gets a moment of consideration before it's cast aside without care. No more lurking, no more hiding; Ixis Naugus surges from the shadows, already casting his magicks mid-leap, reaching towards the Vigilants and snapping his hand back into a tight fist. The air immediately around them and the air from their very lungs is sucked from both, ensuring a nasty sensation of drowning on dry land for the three guards. Asphyxiating. And Naugus, malicious glee in his eyes, appears to have no intention of allowing them breath any time soon or ever again.

Felix makes a token effort to be the lesser evil here

[conjuredskies]

The ugly sound of choking resonates threefold inside the vault; Felix hastens to take a look, and then goes wide-eyed. He sidles carefully through the door, taking in the writhing Vigilants on the floor, the gleeful sorcerer standing above them. His eyes are wide, but it's hard to tell from his expression if he's amused or disturbed or simply... stunned.

He's no fool. Or no hero, perhaps. He circles the scene slowly, nodding to Naugus with an obviously impressed air. He won't kid himself that he has the power to command the elder mage, nor that- what, charging in to stop him? - would help matters.

But he's not sure he's entirely comfortable with the painful death of some vaguely well-meaning idiots, so when they look like they're going unconscious he speaks quietly to Naugus. Respectfully. (Steady voice, don't sound afraid, don't sound ungrateful...) "They'll be more useful if you spare them. I suppose."

[ixis]

Naugus spares Felix a glance aside, one eyebrow raised. "And how's that? We can figure out a way into the warded area on our own. I have faith in you, boy! And they've said our goal is indeed past said wards. What use are they to us now? Or at all?"

He hasn't stopped holding that void of air.

[conjuredskies]

"Oh, in case someone else comes along," Felix says brightly, talking fast. "Injured friends make better distractions than corpses, you know."

He has no idea if this will sway Naugus, but the appeal to self-interest is the only one with any chance of success. Self-interest and pride.

"And- of course, if they're dead they won't be able to bear witness to the feat of magic which overpowered them... so effortlessly. I've seen nothing like it." Look attentive, look relaxed...

[ixis]

He frowns, possibly considering this appeal...then lets his fist unclench. There's a whoomph noise of the air rushing back into the void he'd created. There's another gesture that follows, pinching his fingers together and drawing a line in the air. A portion of the ground near the unconscious soldiers bursts upwards, trailing stone fused into chain links, and closing one clamp after another onto the ankles of the fallen.

"There. I don't need them rushing us from behind with spears at the ready. Now! Let's have a look at that door, shall we?"

[conjuredskies]

Felix doesn’t need to try to act impressed right now. He bows, temporarily wordless, and hastens to examine the door. He lifts his hands to probe the wards, faint light playing over them.

“Hmmm… I can definitely break these elemental wards and the shielding- though perhaps not quietly…” He looks up at the holy symbols marked on the door. “Those protections will harm any daedra I summon to break the locks. Perhaps… hm, wait. They must have some way to deactivate the holy ward, if they put the Cowl inside.”

He spins on his heel, picking out the eldest of the Vigilants and going to search her. “Surely there’s a key…”

[ixis]

Naugus, meanwhile, squints at the wards as well, especially at that holy one. Wards are a wonderful way to keep out...whatever he is, and he's not about to test their strength or set off alarms in attempting passage beyond them.

So he busies himself instead with looking at the other items kept here. That wooden staff in a rather foul-smelling pen, for instance! "What's the policy on taking other things for our own research?" Just asking!

[conjuredskies]

Felix is rummaging through the elder Vigilant’s pockets – no small task given her stony bonds and the sheer number of places a pocket might be hidden in those robes, especially one containing a secret key. One might suspect he’s done this quite a few times before.

“Hm? Well, I expect they’re probably stolen anyway.” He glances around the items in view, shrugs at Naugus before resuming his search. “Why should the Vigil have them?”

He’s pretty sure nothing in here is too powerful (not if the Vigilants could get hold of it). What damage could Naugus do with them that’s worse than refusing him?

That staff might be more interesting than it first appears, though – on close inspection, the wooden appearance might just be dirt and damage, and it actually looks like it might be quite shiny with a little skilled restoration. The gnarled top looks a bit like a carving – some tiny battered figurines, perhaps…?

(( As it happens, I had a particular staff in mind for this. Feel free to have Naugus steal that one, or we can say it’s something else. ;) ))

[ixis]

((THE EVERSCAMPS. I've heard horror stories about these guys. Excellent.))

After hopping into the containment area, Naugus strides over towards that staff, peering at it up and down, making sure there's nothing too obvious about causing harm or setting off alarms. It certainly is a good deal more interesting than it appears at a distance! Though how did it get so dirty in the first place? Why did they let it STAY dirty?

Naugus gives the weapon a tap with the pincer of his claw. And if it doesn't do anything, he's going to snatch it and stuff it into his cloak, stretching back through shadows to his study and depositing it there.

[conjuredskies]

((Hooray! :D))

The staff seems ever so harmless. It's quite safe to pick up. For now.

"Ah!" Felix pulls a talisman from their prisoner's robe, looking at it carefully. It certainly feels akin to the wards on the door- what's Naugus up to? He looks over at the sorcerer, blinking. "The staff?"

Well, no matter. Time to try this key. He goes back to the door, lifting the talisman while he tries to decide how it should interact with the ward: in the event, a touch to the door makes that holy ward chime brightly and fade to a dull mark. Inactive. Felix hisses through his teeth triumphantly.

[ixis]

Naugus waits a few moments, trying to ensure that there are no alarms, no wards, no curses that have been enabled with the attempted theft of this staff.

"Do you know anything about it? The staff, I mean. Why would it even be contained here?"

[conjuredskies]

There’s no explanatory plaque, no name attached to the staff. Just a few wards around the cage – elemental runes that erupt in blasts of fire and frost if Naugus touches them physically. Easy enough for the Ixian mage to deflect, no doubt. Perhaps the more sophisticated protections are reserved for the main vault.

“I don't, no.” Felix glances back. He's working on disentangling the vault wards. “I don’t suppose they had the sense to leave a label with it? Idiots. They must believe it's some daedric artifact, but I doubt they understand it. Knowing them, it might not even be dangerous. You’ve seen how easy it is to make them panic.”

[ixis]

"Is it fear or moral panic? Or a bit of both? Pfah." He gives the fallen Vigilants an extra scoff and look of scorn as he crosses the room back towards Felix.

"I get the distinct feeling that this one has something holy attached to it. I'll gladly meddle with any of the elemental ones, but that one...You're on your own." Proximity already has his skin prickling as if too close to something hot. No thanks.

[conjuredskies]

"Both. It's a long story - and a foolish one, where they're concerned."

He shows Naugus the talisman he found. It’s practically humming with the same aura as the holy ward. “I’m sure this key can deactivate it. I already unsealed the ward for human passage, but I think I might be able to remove it completely. Make sure the threshold is safe for you.”

He looks up at the dulled symbols above the door. “Have you ever broken this kind of… holy magic before? It’s an unusual kind of ward, in my experience.”

But then he's never been troubled by it the way Naugus is.

[ixis]

"Not particularly. They were few and far between back on Mobius, but what there was..." He shudders, "I avoided. Certainly, they could be broken with sheer force, but why bother? I had more important matters to worry about." A good cover as any for having such a profound aversion to a type of magic or energy.

The talisman is given the same look of pained disgust as the ward itself, Naugus flinching back with a hiss. Not so close, kid!

[conjuredskies]

He’s really starting to wonder what this aversion says of Naugus’s nature. But he’s smarter than to tackle the subject here and now; he just withdraws the talisman and keeps it to himself.

“A pity. But it’s always the spell that seemed most trivial, isn’t it?” He raises his hands, feeling out the ward through the talisman. “It doesn’t feel the same as any ward I’ve seen constructed… I wonder…” He looks up at the symbols again, considering his options. He’d rather not go all-out in desecrating something holy to try and break its protection, nor call on a Prince to break it head-on.

He looks around, points out the cage that until recently held the staff. “Could you help me move that over? I want to get up at those symbols directly.”

[ixis]

It really doesn't bode well, does it? Something repulsed by things of a pure and holy nature doesn't sound like the kind of guy that is on the up and up, to say the least. But hey, maybe that's useful knowledge for later.

When the cage is called for, Naugus nods and grunts in affirmation, heading over to grab it in his claw and drag it over. The guy's strong; look at the size of those arms! "THAT I can do."

[conjuredskies]

Oh, now that’s something to see. Felix was about to come over and help, but instead Naugus drags the mass of iron past him – one-handed. Blinking, he makes another note about his fiendish friend: no wrestling matches, they will be traps.

“Thank you,” he says honestly, before he finds the best holds on the cage and clambers up atop it. This close he’s almost able to reach the symbols himself where they’re carved at the top of the door. They really aren’t like the weavings of normal mages… perhaps it’s that simple after all.

He gathers the purple light of a summoning in his hand, gestures, and draws a bound sword, long and transparent. It doesn’t sit entirely easy with the magic on the door; he lifts the blade up to examine it thoughtfully for a minute. That feels interesting…

“All right- I’m going to try something. If it throws me off, er- just try to catch me. Please.”

He takes a breath, steadies his feet on the cage, and takes a swing at the symbols. The instant the blade makes contact he can feel the pressure – magic on magic, bound-in power against disrupting outsider. There’s a whumph and the sword almost bounces back- but there’s a deep slice across the rune, and the ward it’s a part of seems to weaken.

Encouraged, Felix checks his balance and gets to cutting as fast and carefully as he can, until the middle section of symbols are quite obscured and the ward is reduced to remnants of scattered power.

[ixis]

Naugus grumps and harrumphs at being given all these requests like he's a simple thug! Just dumb muscle! But c'mon, that's what you get when you're built like a dump truck and have arms as big around as your own waist.

He watches the attempted destruction with interest, ears perked upright. The fact that Felix's actions left lasting damage and no one was thrown away or nothing exploded? Encouraging! "Is it weakening? It feels like it is." Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

[conjuredskies]

If it helps, that last one sounded more like a hopeful plea. Felix is just thinking of how much it would hurt to get blasted across a stone vault from a height by some angry god. He’s very glad when that doesn’t happen.

“I think so! My blade seems to have more effect than I expected…” He passes a hand over the runes. “They definitely don’t hold as much power. I’ll destroy all the ones I can reach before you test them.” For good measure he’s scratching out the closest ones a little better. It’s tricky up here to get the right angle and distance for a good cut.

[ixis]

"Test them? You mean walk through and see if they don't burn me to a crisp? Or apply magic to them in some fashion?" Naugus spares a glance back towards those guards he'd been strangling moments before, just to ensure none of them are stirring yet.

"And what are the odds there'll only be more beyond this doorway? My patience wears thin!"

[conjuredskies]

"I was going to leave that to you. Perhaps if you simply come closer you can tell how much they discomfort you." Felix is working as fast as he can on chiseling away the holy protections. "I only found one 'key', so I would assume this is the only set of wards. Truthfully, I think this is the most they're capable of. Even their elemental traps aren't very good."

The guards don't seem to be moving yet. They might need a while to gain the strength, even when they start to regain consciousness.

Felix finishes one side, starts cutting into the other. He's getting more confident as he goes. "Of course, at this point I could summon something else to try ramming through. That way you don't need to trouble yourself, and we can break the other wards at the same time."

[ixis]

"How much do we care about leaving evidence we were here and broke into things? Because that ship has clearly sailed." Downed guards, stolen staffs, chipped wards. "At this point, something ramming down what's left would be a welcome change of pace." Naugus is wandering again, intent on prodding and inspecting other items being held in this vault. The guy has a spectacularly flimsy attention span.

[conjuredskies]

“You have a point. The sooner we can get out of here..." Felix scratches out the last sigil he can reach and jumps down, wincing at the shock of his landing on the flagstones. He’s careful to step away from the doors before he calls on his new ally. He concentrates on reaching out; an orb of purple energy forms in one cupped hand, crackling around a dark vortex. He casts it to the flagstones, and it erupts outward with a metallic snap, swelling to an intangible sphere much larger than he is.

When it fades, it leaves the towering form of a frost atronach: a faceless, walking glacier whose very presence begins to chill the air. Felix bows his head to it politely, even as he’s mentally giving it its orders. The atronach turns and trundles over, shoving the cage aside before it moves back and lines up with the door.

“This is about to get noisy,” Felix says, going over to push the other door closed. And stay out of range of any explosions. The atronach lumbers into a charge, building up a bit of speed and a lot of momentum before it rams the doors with a huge fist. The holy sigils flare weakly, the elemental wards erupt in blasts of frost and fire. Only the flames seem to bother the elemental, eliciting a creaking groan from its icy bones. The wounds swiftly refreeze in its freezing aura though, and it trundles back to make another charge. This time, the doors buckle a bit under its impact, splintering around lock and hinges; the wards seem to be sputtering out entirely. Stoic and silent, the atronach gets ready to try again.

“Once more will see us through, I think,” Felix observes. He’s watching the other door tensely. All this noise is resounding through the vault; even if they are well below ground, surely someone’s going to hear. Or come looking for the trio lying on the floor right now. The noise is making a couple of them stir groggily. “We’ll need to move quickly…”