Supercape Posted February 16, 2011 Author Posted February 16, 2011 Rene nodded with appreciation at Nicks power. The young man was clearly stuffed full of arcane power, more than he had let on. "Well done, Monsieur Nick... I confess, I had no idea you had so much strength..." Rene closed his eyes, and painted onto reality. Something artistic, and reflecting his own feelings on the matter. A green cloud of fury, a stench, a nauseating, prickly, poisonous, and soul-destroying wisp of gas that erupted from the ground in front of him like marsh gasp and flew towards Carrefour. Even the immobilised and writhing voodoo master still had some fight left in him, and as he saw the fiendish cloud, he made an almighty effort and briefly wrested free of a few limbs, ducking just under the streaking green gas, which coiled and spun as it flew past him.
trollthumper Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Nick shook his head. "Listen... Kalfu, Carrefour, whatever you want to call yourself... I don't tend to take many things seriously. I'll laugh along at most insults, and don't care if you step on my foot." The room seemed to get slightly colder as the shadows lengthened around Nick. "Now, insults to others... those may stoke my temper. And digging up men's bodies and turning 'em into charnel puppets?" The hands raked out once again, dragging down all but one zombie to the floor of the room. "Well, as you can see... that's something of a tender subject."
Supercape Posted February 16, 2011 Author Posted February 16, 2011 GM "Yes... Yes!" replied Carrefour with a broad grin of pearly white teeth peppered with the blackness of a few missing gaps. "I will have their bodies as my slaves... and their bones too!" As he spoke, a spiderswebs of bones crawled from the earth around him and leapt at Nick, wrapping themselves around him like a whip. "And when I suck your soul from your body, yes! your flesh and bones will by mine too!" he laughed with his horrible cackle. "Nobody will take this hour of triumph from me! Not Siren, not Samedi, and certainly not you!"
Supercape Posted February 16, 2011 Author Posted February 16, 2011 Rene was no fan of necromancy, and the sight of zombies, bones, and skeletons was beginning to make the Frenchman loose his cool. The dark angry green cloud seeped back to the voodoo priest, and hit him, seeping into his nostrils, mouth, ears, and lungs, and dancing around his body as he writhed in angry jerks. "Hmmm. No more than you deserve, diabolique!" spat Rene as he shook his fist and painted another black wisp into reality that curled around the Voodoo Priest - "Rest your weary head, Monsieur.. the fight is over..." sang Rene in a far from friendly voice. "Never" shouted back Carrefour, his body and mind all defiance and determination. "I will not have my prize wrested from me, no matter how strong you are!"
trollthumper Posted February 16, 2011 Posted February 16, 2011 Nick stumbled slightly as the bones wrapped around his legs. Damn! he thought. I could cut through this like butter... but that'd take the will out of the arms, and we'd have all the zombies on our hands. A brief moan distracted him from his reverie. Speaking of zombies... One of the Confederate war dead was making its way to Nick, arms outstretched and jaw slack. "Well, hello there," he said, reaching into his jacket. "Y'know, despite my profession, I'm not one to desecrate a corpse. But seeing as your own self has probably moved on to wherever, I'm pretty sure that you're not too pleased with your body being used as a puppet. So..." He brought the cosh down hard on the zombie's head. "I'm pretty sure you won't mind this." The head cracked under the blow, falling from the spine and causing the body to follow soon after. "Yeah," Nick said. "Really hoping you didn't mind that."
Supercape Posted February 18, 2011 Author Posted February 18, 2011 GM Living or dead, it did not matter. Nick proved himself no slouch in brawling if the need came to it. With its ancient cranium crushed by the cosh, it toppled over, inanimate to the world. A few black necromantic blasts strayed Nicks way from the scared acolytes, and although Nick was now a sitting duck, they could do nothing whilst he was protected by his Jacket that was bathed in the power of the Styx itself. They may as well have been using pea shooters on a tank. Carrefour still roared defiance but it was a roar tempered with respect and even a note of fear as he recognised the power that oozed from Nick. Again, he flung a cobweb of bones at his foe, without speaking this time. He recognised his adversary was very dangerous, and was using all of his concentration for the battle.
Supercape Posted February 18, 2011 Author Posted February 18, 2011 Rene realised he had little chance of overcoming Carrefour's ferocious mind and steely will with spells of sleep or enchantment. Perhaps a more direct approach? "All this darkness. One cannot paint it! It needs a little spark!" he laughed, as a lightning bolt shot from the sky and hurtled towards the voodoo priest. Only too split and bounce of him heading skywards again, without Carrefour so much as raising an eyebrow. "I prefer the dark" he muttered, his concentration still on Nick.
trollthumper Posted February 18, 2011 Posted February 18, 2011 'Why am I not surprised?" Nick said. He looked over at the cultists. "Wonder what your stock in this is? Power? Revelation? Getting closer to divinity?" He began to study Carrefour. "Thought he was Kalfu, myself. For a bit. The Fates ain't exactly clear on his matters. Now, either Kalfu's more pathetic than I thought, or someone's trying to be a pretender to the throne. But if he is... let me get you closer to divinity." The hands twitched, lifting one of the cultists from the ground and flinging him at Carrefour. "Not my strongest line, but I go with what I can get," he muttered under his breath.
Supercape Posted February 19, 2011 Author Posted February 19, 2011 GM The poor cultist flew through air and straight into the struggling Carrefour's body. The two of the collided heavily and ended up in a rolling sprawl. For all his mental fortitude, Carrefour was no longer blessed with a young body, the impact drew the wind from him, and as he knocked heads with one of his acolytes, his eyes rolled to the top of is head, and he sank to his knees. "So close... so close..." he whispered, almost nonsensical to the world, before giving Nick a last glare. "You will pay for this, I swear by the seven oaths of Ah..." But alas, he could not complete even one oath. The light went from his eyes, and he collapsed face down into the floor.
Supercape Posted February 19, 2011 Author Posted February 19, 2011 "Good throw!" exclaimed Rene. "Maybe your American game baseball is worth something after all, eh?" he chuckled. The zombies collapsed, lifeless, to the ground, and the remaining acolytes, realising they were totally outmatched, were using all their energy (without success) in trying to free themselves from the grasping hands Nick had summoned. Rene walked over to Carrefour and picked up the sister statuette. It was of Kali, but Ivory rather than Obsidian. It had a few small hairline cracks from Nicks assault but it looked like it would hold together. "What do you make of this?"
trollthumper Posted February 19, 2011 Posted February 19, 2011 "Yeah," Nick said. "If that's Kalfu, then somewhere Legba must be laughing his ass off." He turned to the other cultists. "Don't suppose you're going to try and fight? It'd just make things messier..." Once he had addressed the acolytes, he went over to examine the statue. "I can take a guess as to what this represents," he said. "Yin and yang, vanilla and chocolate, positive and negative. One ends draws in the energy -- in this case, the souls -- the other end pumps it out. Mind you, we broke the end that was gathering the power and made sure it got redistributed evenly, so for all the mojo sloshing around here, there's a good chance the ritual would've failed."
Supercape Posted February 19, 2011 Author Posted February 19, 2011 "And now?" replied Rene, turning over the statuette in his hands and remaining oblivious to the groans, pleas and desperation of the acolytes who strained uselessly against the power of Cimitiere. It was magical, that was for sure, and he could recognise the mythology it symbolised, but that was about it. "If there are still souls in here... then we should release them should we not? send them on their way? and then... the statuette itself. Useless without its twin, I would imagine. What to do with it? It is a rather lovely piece of art, after all. "
trollthumper Posted February 19, 2011 Posted February 19, 2011 "It would be easy to nullify the bond," Nick said, "or smash the statue, if you're not that attached to it. But... well, what if we get a repeat of the first statue? That chaos again... I'm sure Ghede would be okay with sorting it out, but he'd probably expect something in return..." He considered the statue, what lay inside... and just what they might be feeling. "Oh, well," he said. "What's life without a little excitement?" He focused his will into the statue, seeking to sunder the bonds that lay within.
Supercape Posted February 19, 2011 Author Posted February 19, 2011 Rene felt the souls explode out of the statuette. His senses on the matter were dim compared to his friends, but he could feel the pressure of spirits around him. Released! Free! they cried. If Carrefour had unleashed these souls, under his command, into the ground below them, he would have had an army of civil war corpses to command. It was a good thing Nick had knocked him out. He looked around, seeing with his mind's eye the wisps of the souls circling around them, roaring their joy as the chains of servitude fell of them. He had no idea how ancient some may have been. Centuries? Millennia? Long enough to relish the broken chains, for sure.
trollthumper Posted February 19, 2011 Posted February 19, 2011 The joy of the liberated spirits felt like a symphony around Nick. Unlike back at the auction house, there was no rush, no desperation, no desire for corporeal form. There was just joy, release, and the hint of the world beyond. "You're free," he said, not as an explanation but almost as a fact. "Whatever bondage you've been kept in all these years is sundered. Whatever plot you've been detained for is thwarted. All that remains is peace."
Supercape Posted February 19, 2011 Author Posted February 19, 2011 "Well, I think that's ze end of that. All ends that end well" said Rene, pocketing the Ivory Statuette. He wasn't somebody who could bear to see good art go to waste. It was art! "I suppose we should now call ze 'cops' as you Americans say, oui?" he chuckled, to the groans of the acolytes, most of who had realised the futility of struggle. "And an undertaker, or perhaps an archeologist..." he added, looking at the two dozen civil war corpses that littered the ground. They deserved some kind of formal burial after being abused.
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