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Chapter - 16 "Mind Games"

Garrock found himself drifting in and out of consciousness. The fog was all he could breathe and with each heavy gasp, it felt as if it was creeping into his head more and more. Jostling along as the Brute dragged him. All he could see was Reecie's feet until even those were lost to the sea of red. The urge to rest started to set in. To just let the fog take him. Then he was dropped, left lying on his back he called out, eyes fluttering as he fought the urge to sleep.

"Dog..." he muttered. No reply came, all he could hear were the distance voice of his companions like whispers in the distance. Garrock closed his eyes just for a moment. A moment cant hurt. He thought. As he opened his eyes they were assaulted with the light of a magical slab simulating the sun was set into a false window. He raised a hand to block it and saw his armor was gone as were the scars on his knuckles from the many drunken brawls over the years. What is this? Where am I? Garrock sat up sharply. His eyes darted around as he suddenly came to the realization. "I'm home?"

This didn't look anything like his shack in Black Rock no he was home back in Kaldahn. Garrock threw the sheets off him scrambling to the stone doorway. It was just as he remembered. His trophy troll head mounted above the fireplace. The walls floor and ceiling all made of carved stone, embers of the eternal forge were slotted into various places on the walls and ceilings giving the room a gentle yellow hue. A crystalline table stood in the center of the room laid out across it were his smithing tools just as he had left them. "Daruk?...Boy! Where are yeh? Larasa!" He hollered. Running to his front door. A large thick wood and stone tiled surface that bore the same markings as those on his bracelets. He thrust the door open, leading to one of the main halls of the mountain city. This wasn't right where should have been a sea of dwarfs wandering up and down the giant hall sat only a thick layer of dust. The hall dark at both ends...abandoned. Where the fires from the eternal forge should have lit the city there was only darkness. "Daruk!...Larasa!" He cried once more. His voice boomed and echoed down the hall until it faded to nothing. Garrock fell to his knees. He slid his hand across the floor collecting a fair amount of dust before rubbing it in between his fingers. This wasn't the home he remembered. It was hell. Angrily he hit the floor with a closed fist. "Why...why am I here? Ancestors... where are my people? My family...where have they gone?" The dwarfs head hung low as tears started to dot the stone. But it seemed this hell would not even let him grieve as something scraped on stone behind him coming from his quarters. It grabbed him by his ankles and flipped him onto his back. At his feet, he saw those black thorned vines binding around him, dragging him back into his home. As the thorns sinched down digging into his skin. The walls of Khaldan giving way to those white woods again.

The fog had subsided again. The vines around his feet snaked off and up into this destroyed old well where a what looked like a moving breathing mass of vines like a giant tree was drawing him in. It seemed to be the source of them all. Long destroyed and burned out structures surrounded him. Behind the mass of vines spewing from the well looked to be some kind of church. There he saw Reecie climbing the steps. Then his eyes fell to something more concerning. "DOG!" He shouted seeing Raku down on one knee, sword at his side tip down like a cane. A smaller blade sticking out from his side, a trail of blood leading up to it. To his sides were his hammer and ax, almost out of reach as the vines slowly tugged him closer to the well. He tried to roll and grab his ax but the vines tugged hard as he did putting them well out of reach. "Dog! Toss me yer sword!" The brute's head suddenly lifted hearing the dwarfs call as he struggled to turn to see the dwarf in his own peril. With a heavy grunt, He launched his old sword side long sending it bouncing across the ash-covered ground towards him. It was just enough as Garrock fumbled with the blade cutting his hand slightly as he pulled it over to get at the hilt he sliced the vines off his feet.

The dwarf stood. Slightly winded and worse for wear but he moved to gather his weapons before moving to Raku who had collapsed to his side now. Vines began to creep towards him appearing to only take advantage of creatures that didn't appear to able to fight back. "Dog! Dog what happened?" Garrock sliced at the encroaching vines before kneeling down to help the brute.

"We have to get...Anareecie as far from here as possible."The wolf grunted as Garrock returned his makeshift crutch. "I remember now, everything. We were so foolish...we brought everything she wanted... right back to her."

Inside the doorway of the church, Reecie stood with her bow raised and an arrow notched. The soft runner beneath her boots had browned with age and weather. The only thing that appeared to be holding the front half of the church up was the writhing mass of thorned vines that coated nearly every stone and rock. Several rotted and collapsed pews neatly held long decaying corpses of all sorts and species. All of them with they're hands bound by vines to look as if they died praying. Still one could hear the ghostly chanting that just repeated from each in a dull rhythmic echo. At the far end of the church where most of the rubble lay, a large circle had been cleared. A pentacle was immaculately carved into the slab. At first, it appeared as if Reecie was the only living thing here. Taking a slow step towards the pentacle the very shadows of the attending corpses appeared to bleed away, drawing the very darkness off every nook and cranny into a mass that collected on the step in front of the sigil. She took aim as it began to rise up and take the shape of a woman in a tattered white gown. Her skin was dead bluish pale color. Her fingertips were worn to the exposed bone as the shadow formed her outstretched arms. Her visage coming into existence from the ground up. Reecie's bow lowered slightly as the womans face formed. Disfigured by deep claw marks she only saw it for a split second before it was consumed by more darkness that faded into the shape of a Garou skull, pentacle carved into its head. A familiar pair of antlers were last to complete the elves presence, the same charms and tinkling bones from her dream rattled as her head tilted to one side. That start white hair covering part of the mask as she did.

"Forgive my appearance... a gift from the present company." Her voice was oddly soothing given this place and its nature. It was soft and elegant like a mother soothing a child to sleep. "My, the mighty warrior you are becoming Ana, how I have longed to see what became of you." The elves pale grey eyes shifted to a soft hazel matching Reecie's. Her bow went taught once more glaring at the elf as she took aim between its eyes.

"Don't call me that! You have no right!" She scowled.

"Is it so hard to believe young one?"

"You're a monster like everything else in these woods!" Reecie adjusted her footing getting ready to fire.

"Do not waste your arrows, there was a time when you and I were one and the same." Very slowly the tall pale elf approached Reecie. Her head tilted to the other side now as she raised her hands for Reecie to see. "What happened to your father? I sense he departed violently" Reecie's draw went limp once more. This is the woman from my dream... But it couldn't possibly be...the only one that ever called me Ana was... Her eyes narrowed to a suspicious glare.

"He died protecting his farm. My mother died a century before him. What game are you playing witch?" The elves eyes faded back to the pale gray as she drew closer still.

"Indeed, I gave everything to achieve what no one else could. Immortality and the chance to unite all of Alta under one banner...the rightful banner."

"And what banner is that?"

"That of the ancients, of the rightful blood, of our blood." Ana kept her string loose but raised her bow once more as the elf was almost within arms reach now.

Before Reecie could reply a bolt whistled past her neck and hit the elf in the shoulder.

"Eye for an eye bitch." Raku growled through gritted teeth as he pulled the dagger from his side. He dropped it on the runner with a loud clatter. His hand attempting to cover the would. Reecie looked back to him, alarmed at his state before her head whipped back to the elf as she gasped sharply her wound stained he not with blood but some sort of black sludge. She took a few steps back as several Tendrils of vines burst through the stone around her. Garrock took a stance behind Reecie weapons at the ready.

"Impotent whelp!" she cried her voice shifting from that soft warm tone to a harsher etherial pitch like two voice speaking slightly out of sync. Reecie drew her arrow one last time.

"Hes in bad shape we need to leave," Garrock muttered. Reecie nodded still not buying into the elves words.

"Do you know where the beast people came from Ana? WE created them! Our bloodline. We built these miserable races from the very dust of the cosmos. Gave them life and meaning. They exist only to serve us. And how did they thank our people? By all but wiping us out in their greed!" The elf wrenched the bolt from her shoulder and dropped it to the ground.

"I don't care! Tell me about the amulet! Everything! Why is Raku a slave to its power!" Reecie shouted having heard enough of the elves stories she stepped back towards Raku.

" Oh naive child, because you can not see the puppeteers strings does not mean they aren't there. You've brought my crowning achievement right back to me so that I may complete what I started so long ago." The elf let out a short laugh as she started to rise off the floor. "I always knew you would follow in my footsteps even under the tutelage of your simpleton father, my blood is in your veins, the same blood that courses back millennia. Its time the ancients rise again to rule Alta as is their birth rite. Join me Ana and there is nothing you can't have just give...me..the amulet...I will explain everything then." The elf outstretched one of her bone tipped hands. An obvious foreboding as the stone in question began to hum.

"I told you not to call me that," Reecie muttered and fired off her arrow. At the same moment Vines sprouted from the elves fingers capturing the arrow and spiraling towards Reecie like a giant barbed spear.

"Then die with the rest of this land!" the elven Litch cried.

"Reecie!" Raku cried throwing himself at her. Reecie fell to the floor as the spiraling vines stabbed into Rakus midsection, tearing through his armor and then his very core the thorned tendrils burst from his back tearing fur and flesh with them. Rakus limbs went limp, his head dropped forward, his crossbow fell from hand to the blood-soaked runner below as everything he had left dripped from the thorns. Reecie rolled to her back, mortified at the sight of Raku hanging dead in the air.

" No! What have you done you ignorant mongrel!" The lich screamed withdrawing her vines. Raku's body fell in a heap at Reecie's feet. She dropped her bow and crawled over to Rakus lifeless frame where she cradled his head pulling it into her lap. Garrock rushed at the lich hacking at the vines now sprouting all over the earth in an effort to separate them.

"Unless you wish to suffer the same fate as Messari destroy the stone NOW" the lich started to form a mass of vines around her in a protective sphere nearly blocking her from view entirely. Rakus maw parted slightly, a waft of smoke rose from it and kept growing in intensity. The fur against her legs became warm, at first she thought it might of been blood but all of his mane was dry. The heat, his body was radiating continued to grow. His claws faded from their normal black to a bleached white. Even the hole in his chest began to smoke along with his other wounds. Stranger, still they appeared to be closing. W-whats happening? Is he healing somehow? Reecie looked back to the mass of vines that Garrock was chopping wildly at. The ground began to tremble, Wendigos, skeletal beasts, undead beings, and all manner of other horrors diverged onto the church. Pouring out from the woods like insects climbing over one another. The lich was giving it her all to stop whatever Raku was becoming. Garrock retreated to Reecie as creatures started pouring over the walls and piles of stone.

"This is it lass!" He shouted. Reecie was oblivious to it all staring down at Rakus now smoldering body. What....is happening? She looked back to the lich on the verge of tears. "What have you done!?"

"Quickly destroy the amulet!" The lich cried again. A sudden hissing and popping like burning wood came from Raku. she felt him move even snapping her attention back. Raku was on his hands and knees now. His whole body was consumed in a thick oily smoke..

"Raku!? You're alive?!" Just as she spoke a ridge of white flames erupted from the brutes back causing him to rear up, arch up ,throwing his head back. His maw opened wide as if to cry out but only flames jetted from his maw with such force some of it deflected off his teeth in all directions All at once his fur ignited, his armor mostly burned away fell to the ground in scalding chunks. A great orange and yellow mane of fire flared from his neck and in the same instant, the flesh of his head melted away with a pained moan. His voice no longer that gentle gravely rumble, now carried a thunderous boom that nearly made her teeth rattle. It was like his vocals were being channel through him from something much larger. It was then Reecie recognized the fiery beast from her dream as its head turned to her a baren burning skull. It empty eye sockets filled with bright green flame as it stood. The armor fell away from its body all but burned to ash. Before Reecie now stood a vaguely familiar Wolfkin consumed by fire. That same concussive blast that tossed Raku before now kept the sheer heat and flame at bay distorting around her. Garrock stayed close not wanting to risk what was happening out of side of the pulsing radius. The monsters that had become so numerous they were climbing over one another to get to the trio were now writhing and scrambling for shelter as they're very flesh boiled and burst into flame, bones blackened and crumbled to ash.

"Ignorant child! You don't comprehend the destruction you have wrought upon this world!" The flaming brute leaped in one motion at the lich attempted to thwart him with her mass of vines but they proved useless against this new beast. He tore through the thick wall of vines faster than they could burn away and slammed a hand into her neck with such force her mask flew off to the side exposing the sheer terror on the pale elves face as her skin began to burn.

"You thought you could contain me forever Methail!" the beast bellowed pinning the lich to the floor. Your debt of souls is unpaid yet you use my power! Worse you had the audacity to trap me in a mortals frail form!" He slammed her down again as Vine desperately tried to harm him but simply burned away with each attempt. Reecie was in awe of the sound of this new creature? Demon? She didn't know what to make of it. Oddly, it didn't seem to speak with its mouth as during all of this not once had she seen its jaw move. "You have made your last bargain and your final offering to me will be all you have, your magic, your body and your soul are all mine!" This was when the beast maw finally opened, a glowing tongue of what looked to be magma dragged across the lich's face leaving nothing in its wake but burned flesh and molten saliva. Reecie shut her eyes tight clinging to Garrock realizing what was to come next. The lich never had a chance as the crunching started the beast tore her head free and consumed it in one gulp. The remaining creatures that managed to escape the killing radius of heat began to deteriorate rapidly. With the death of their master they were nothing but hollow bones scattered on the ground save for the few creatures such as the wendigos that did not rely on the liches magic for life.

"Reecie..." Garrock muttered. Her eyes opened to see those green flames angled at her. The beast rose from his kill and walked as close to the warding sphere as he could seeming to study it. He reached out with one hand and actually was able to thrust it through. Though as he did it appeared to hurt him as the flame of it was instantly extinguished. Almost like some sort of acid bath the flesh of it went next evaporating leaving just bones and claws up to its wrist before it pulled it back and watched as the flesh regrew before catching fire again.

"Clever..." the disembodied voice of the beast boomed once more. "You bear the liches amulet." The vast with of the flames on the beast started to recede down to a soft flicker like a low burning torch. The beast pointed to her. "The beast is your familiar then?" Reecie looked puzzled. Garrock however understood what that was and took the liberty of explaining to her.

"It's talking about the dog, Haraku. Mages, sorcerers and those of a magical upbringing often take in the spirits of animals as familiars. It gives them a physical existence and binds them to the very soul of the living being." Reecie blinked looking to Garrock.

"Why? Why would someone do that?" Garrock shook his head.

"Do you know nothin girl? Familiars are like lifelong companions. They share things with they're masters that can not be seen like emotions and memories. Some more wicked folk push the boundaries and take demons as familiars for more...aggressive help."

"Heed the dwarfs words for I do not have the time nor care to explain your situation in length. Time spent in your world weakens me thus if you have no need and nothing to offer I must leave." The beast of fire took a knee bowing to her." A thousand questions ran through her head this was all so sudden. A Familiar? Raku? And what even was THIS thing? What happened to Raku? She thought.

"Wait!" She said rising from her knees slightly. "Who or...what are you then?" The beasts emerald colored flames flared up once more, its head lifting a little.

"I am known as the shapeless, the embodiment of anger,hatred, and anguish. You may call me...Vile." Its answer only left Reecie with more questions as the beasts body for a moment before extinguishing entirely swallowing the beast in a sooty smoke that when cleared revealed a unharmed and unconscious Haraku. The brute slumped and fell to his side. Reecie crawled over to him checking over the fur of his now fully natural form. All his wounds were gone he looked healthy again. She cradled his face for a moment pushing all the other things from the front of her brain as she was just happy to have him back. Running her thumbs over the thinner fur of his temples seemed to elicit a response. The brutes eyes opened barely a slit, his head turning slightly looking up at her.

"I'm sorry you got dragged into this...I never ment-" Reecie shook her head smiling as she placed a finger over his snout to silence him before kissing the side of his muzzle, her arms hugging him tight around tight his neck.

"I have so much to learn still...Im just glad it will be with you, not without."