Selling Your Soul|Beastlands

[Kender Bard]

Demetria tried to ignore the gnawing in her belly, but it was hard. Despite its persistence the past several days, it wasn't something she could just ignore.

But rather than go attempt to hunt, she inspected the wrappings of Bael's wounds. Her stomach churned at the smell that came off them, despite nothing being in her belly. She held her breath and changed the wrappings. She'd gotten all the quills out of him after the fight, had washed and bound his wounds where they were more than small holes, but he'd been hurt all over and she was not a healer. Nor would they find one here, out on the fringes of the Beastlands, the only place that Demetria had felt safe. They'd been relatively left alone here. One Beast did happen upon them, either a particularly vicious Poldoran or a Belegite. They'd been attacked but Demetria had managed to, with Bael's help, drive them off. The scuffle had only taxed Bael's strength, though, and since that day he'd grown increasingly weaker and sicker.

After the wrappings were changed with older linens she'd washed, she bathed his brow with some water. "I'm hungry," she sighed. "But I don't want to leave you like this. What if that Beast should return and find you alone?" She sat next to where he lay and draped one of her stiff, dead wings over him. "I should leave you to die."

[tuo]

Bael growled weakly. "You shouldn't worry about me. You still have some strength left.." He coughs and shudders from the strain it took on his weakened body. "Tending to me now at the cost of yourself is just stupid."

[Kender Bard]

"It is," she agreed. But you wouldn't be in this position if it weren't for me.

She had changed. She should have been disgusted with herself, but, to her surprise, she wasn't. She was in terrible violation of her beliefs to Evil. And it went against everything that she learned growing up in Morilanta as well... But for some reason the idea of just abandoning Bael now bothered her more than staying.

Every day she promised herself it would be the last and she would flee back to her old homeland in the morning, and every dawn proved the lie for what it was. She argued with herself, reasoned, rationalized. There wasn't anything for her in Morilanta anymore. There isn't anything here for me either.

There was Bael though. And soon he'll die and it won't matter. He looked after me in my weakness and my sickness. I'm just paying back a debt. She closed her eyes and lay down, resting her head against his shoulder and trying not to breathe in too deeply. "Oh well."

"What a pathetic sight."

Demetria jerked upright at the sudden voice. She scrambled to her feet before she even saw the figure standing in front of her.

A dead man was standing in front of them. His flesh was as white as a corpse and half rotting away. The stench was terrible. Patches where the flesh was gone completely, she could glimpse glistening white bone. His hair had all fallen out except for a few handful of patches that still clung white and dead like straw to his head. His teeth were mostly missing, discolored and crooked. And where he should have had eyes, there were only gaping socks in which two red lights glowed.

Demetria a frightened sound, backing away a little.

"Peace," the man said. Despite his appearance, his voice was still strong and deep. "I am here as an arbiter of sorts. I picked my visage for my own amusement. It won't be terribly long before one or both of you look the same. The dead always look the same in the end; it doesn't even take all that long for the individual to melt away and become nothing more than a corpse." He pointed a bony finger, nailess, at Bael. "You are already half there, by the looks of things. I can smell the grave on you."

[tuo]

Bael's hackles rose as the dead man spoke to him but lacked the strength to more than to half raise himself from the ground, staring at him. "I can survive this..whatever you are leave now before-" Before he could finish his sentence, a coughing fit wracks his body, forcing him back on the ground.

[Kender Bard]

"Why bother, when you'll be dead so soon?" Taed asked. "Then I'll be back anyway."

Demetria hissed at Bael. "You fool!" she growled. "This is Taed. Show respect!"

For her part, she had rolled onto her knees and prostrate herself before the Force, recognizing him for what he was.

Taed gestured with a roll of his wrist. "This one understands respect and humility. But she has been bred and raised for it. You Belegites only understand a kind of grudging respect. Although if you've seen my undead children before, when they swept the lands howling for the blood of Efil, then perhaps I would understand the confusion."

Despite having no real eyes to speak of, he managed to give Bael a hard and disapproving look.

[tuo]

Bael looked at the undead creature again with a realization seeping into him and he felt dread. "My apologies lord Taed.." He manages to say even as his breathing is becoming labored. "For..for what reason have you come to us if I may ask?"

[Kender Bard]

Taed regarded them in stoney silence a moment before answering, "Because of this one." He nodded towards Demetria. "Her prayers are loud in my ears. I have a fondness for the men and women who make a life of sending new souls to me... Though it has been long since she embarked on such a mission."

"My deepest apologies, my lord," Demetria murmured, a shiver sweeping through her.

"Nonetheless, the desperation in your voice when you cry out my name has piqued my interest," Taed said. "Also... Evil is trapped in the hearts of all men, but make no mistake. He exists. Now and then, I feel compelled to assist those who give their hearts over to him. Now is such a case. I have an answer to your prayers. I will not give you life or healing, but I will let your souls be stripped from your useless husks and placed in a new, powerful vessel."

Demetria cried out softly, "You are too kind, my lord!"

"I am," Taed growled. "Not for this offer, but because of the warning I give you... If you go through with this, your soul will be forever shunned from the heavens beyond the veil. You will belong wholly to the body you will be tied to."

Demetria was confused by that. "We will be undead?"

"No," Taed said. "The bodies I refer to are not mortal, and only mortals may pass beyond the veil. If you accept this offering, you will be cast into the depths of the abyss should you perish on this mortal plane. But if you are truly a child of Evil, that will not sway you."

"It does not," Demetria answered, then glanced at Bael. "Join me, Bael. He is offering us immortality."

[tuo]

For a moment, Bael wondered whether he had simply gone completely delirious from the sickness and pain. But even if that was the case, he knew he did not want to die, consequences be damned and looked over at Demetria at her words and felt his mouth pull at the corners into a sickly grin and nods at her. He then turns his head and speaks to Taed. "I accept your offer Lord Taed."

[Kender Bard]

"Somehow I knew you would," he said. "Then to begin with, we need to rid you of these weak bodies."

Demetria shivered with a hint of fear. "How?"

Taed made a gesture and suddenly they were no longer in the Beastlands; they stood on the lip of the great volcano in Naurorod. Despite the location, they were curiously untouched by the heat.

"Throw yourselves into the fire of the volcano," Taed told them. "And rise anew once your souls have been reforged. It may take some time. It will not be very pleasant. But you will know immortality when it is over."

Demetria glanced at Bael and offered him her arm. "Together then?"

[tuo]

Bael looked over at Demetria and nodded, using the rest of his strength to push himself up so he can take her arm and move under his own power after a fashion. "Together..forever."

[Kender Bard]

Demetria hesitated a little when faced with the long drop before them. Pain is fleeting, she thought, some dim echo of something had taught her when she was young. And so is glory. One buys the other. But this is a glory everlasting.

She licked her lips, took a deep breath, and jumped with Bael.

Taed watched their descents briefly, before uttering a soft, low, "Heh." And then he was gone, cinder and ash on the wind.