76th of Ash, 4621
He hadn't anticipated that the mage would want to get started so quickly. Of course, he knew that Raphael meant business; there was nothing else he seemed to want more than the mark Arkash had on the surface of his skull. But even so, didn't the man have a job to do? Any sort of life at all? Maybe two days was all it took to clear his schedule, but he doubted it considering how busy the noble made himself out to be.
Then again, Raphael was a noble. Arkash sincerely doubted the man had ever done a real day's work in his life. His definition of busy was probably not as severe as Arkash's. So, it made sense that on the afternoon of the second day, they were on their way to the dungeons.
Druskai raiders often attached the fortress from the seas. It was usually nothing that the mages stationed there couldn't handle, but the survivors were brought in as prisoners. For what reasons, Arkash could only imagine. Regardless of the purpose they usually served, Arkash was going to be practicing his magic on them under Raphael's supervision and guidance. he didn't know what to expect, or what sorts of magic he was going to learn, but he was excited. Arkash knew he'd only scraped the surface of what a blood mage was capable of.
He waited at the grody subterranean gate with his arms crossed, leaning against the nearest wall that the Halamire would allow him to. He caught them glancing at his True form on more than one occasion, but didn't really pay them much more mind than a glance back. He couldn't be sure what they knew, but he was fairly certain they didn't know he was the tan-skinned slave from before. All he could tell for sure was that they knew he was repulsive and were it not for the Veir's orders, they would be on him like homeless people on bread.
Even if he didn't care for the human morsels that waited as guards of the dungeon, he couldn't deny that their gazes unsettled him to some degree. None of it was for show, of course. Arkash was anything but open with what made him uncomfortable, but who wouldn't be uncomfortable to find that the tall, trained killers were taking turns watching him? If he were a more empathetic Rath, he would have taken the time to understand that they were probably bored, and had nothing else to look at but the engraved stone of the halls all day every day. Though Arkash found the dampness and the curious dripping noise interesting for some small spell, he didn't think he'd like listening to it all day every day.
He shared their excitement when the sound of boots on the staircase above began to descend with a steady increase in volume. Arkash looked up to see the shadow against the warm glow of a lantern, then squinted in the darkness as Raphael's shape came into view above him. "Oh! It's good that you're so punctual my new, reptilian apprentice!" He called from atop the stairs. Arkash grimaced. "I hope these overpaid sentries didn't give you any sort of trouble, that would be most unpleasant."
Arkash would have appreciated the call in his defense if Raphael wasn't so over the top about it. Instead, he was made to cringe. "No trouble, my Veir," he returned with a shake of his head. When the man, at last, stood beside him before the door, Arkash exhaled through his nose, then looked to the guards. In the lord's presence, their discipline was on an entirely different level. They didn't once look at him, or look at anything that wasn't directly in front of them. 'Best behavior', he thought.
"You're both dismissed, go elsewhere," the lord declared with a wave of his hand. At once and in unison, the two guards stomped, turned, and fell out of the formation in marching order.
"Dogs..." Arkash muttered under his breath as he watched them ascend the stairs.
"Quite," the noble returned, then stepped forward and undid the latch of the dungeon gate. When it swung open, Arkash was allowed to see a portion of the inside. When Raphael motioned him to enter first, he stepped inside and looked about. The Prison was two stories with a large open area in the center of the lowest floor. It was largely square, with some sort of stone platform to run the perimeter in some sort of stone walkway. Arkash could see the alcoves of prison cells, carved into the walls with ruddy iron bars to guard whatever captives laid behind. It smelled awful, not unlike a sewer with its intense, eye-burning stench of feces, urine, and decay. There was some call of pain as the lantern light illuminated the dark that the prisoners had otherwise been submerged in. "Filthy things, aren't they?"
"What?" Arkash asked as he looked back on the mage.
"Druskai," he elaborated. "Elves in general, disgusting creatures," he spoke with a curl of his nose, then proceeded to walk past the rathor, and down the stairs. Arkash furrowed his brow with some level of concern, then followed after the man. Raphael carried a lot of hate with him, it seemed. Arkash scarcely saw people who were so open with their disgust, but it seemed that the revelation of Arkash's true nature was a cause to let his own nature see the light of day.
As he descended the stairs, he came to realize that a lot of the cages were empty. Others housed decaying corpses. Some of them appeared to have been there for a long time, to a point where enough skin around the stomach had rotted away to allow the mess of organs inside to spill out in a pile around the midsection of the corpse. With his nightvision constantly active, Arkash saw it all in graphic detail. He grimaced with a squint, then looked at the noble ahead of him, who seemed to be checking each cell with the light of his lantern, as if he couldn't remember which ones were full, and which were empty. "...Which ones are full?" Arkash asked without expecting an answer.
"Don't know..." Replied the necromancer. "Most of them were alive when I was last down here, but I haven't needed extra sinew foam in a while..."
"Sinew foam?" Arkash quizzed as he caught up with the mage.
"Yes, it's what you make when you use the mortar and pestle. It adapts to the material it first touches after being dispensed from the gun."
Arkash blinked. "...You use these guys to make sinew foam?"
"Well yes, why else would I keep them around?" The Druskai were livestock to Raphael, nothing else. Arkash looked on with wide eyes and found the bony corpse of some other Druskai... Except they weren't dead. His heartbeat still thumped in his chest. Arkash focused on that soft beating while he stared at the skinny male, face down in some puddle in his cell. "That one's alive?" The Veir asked, having noticed Arkash's intent stare. Hesitantly, he nodded a bit. "Excellent, he'll make the perfect guinea pig."
With that, the Veir opened the door of the cage, then strut to the center of the room where he pulled up a chair and set some bag down beside it. "...What are you doing?" Arkash asked with some concern.
"Oh! Apologies, my assistants normally know what to do on this part. Could you fetch the lad and bring him to the chair? Much obliged." Raphael spoke somewhat sarcastically while he knelt beside the long bag and began to tamper with its contents. Arkash looked between the chair, a rickety old thing that lay littered with stains of various sizes and colors, and the Druskai who barely breathed on the floor. He supposed it was a mercy, whatever they were going to do to him.
So, Arkash stepped into the cell and slipped his claws under the man's arms. The older male was very light; almost no weight to him at all. Did they starve in those cells? He looked to Raphael, then shook his head. If they were just there for material, he supposed that Raphael didn't need them to eat. Dead flesh functioned just as well in the mortar and pestle, as he'd discovered. Carefully, Arkash dragged the wheezing husk to the chair and set him down. The man hung limp, head draped over the backrest while the rest of his body dripped with what smelled to be his own piss. Arkash looked with concern to the noble, who handed him a rag thoughtfully. Arkash took no time to rub his claws dry, but the stink clung to him.
"Right... So blood magic," Raphael began and clasped his hands together before he drew some lengthy steel scabbard from his bag, and the pommel of Arkash's sword stayed jutting from the end. His eyes widened a little at its image, for he hadn't seen it in some time. "I would guess that you're at least Tier Three in the mark; you've clearly already mastered Suffuse, and Sway, right?" Arkash nodded carefully. "Good, then we'll try some Journeyman-Level abilities. Have you heard of the Razor?" Arkash shook his head. "Ether leech?" Another shake of his head. "Hemorrhage?"
"None of them," Arkash spoke with yet another shake of his head.
"Good. We'll start there," The mage declared, and drew some dark, leather-bound book from his floored bag, and kicked the bag to slide across the ground, likely out of the way. He passed the sword to Arkash without warning, and Arkash shot out his claws to catch it. "That thing is well made; cut through most scabbards I tried to put it in... The sheath actually weighs more than the sword now."
Arkash grinned at the compliment; he hadn't tried to make a good sword when he crafted it, he just knew what sort of balance suited him, and his blood made for good, strong weapons and tools. "Thanks, I guess," he returned. "I used to cut up Argent Knights with his thing."
"I seriously don't doubt it," the mage returned with a kind smile. "So... Start by cutting some sort of wound in the target's chest. We're going to start with Ether leech." The noble was nose deep in his book, using the light of his lantern to read through the pages in the gloomy darkness.
He looked upon the 'target' and softened his brow remorsefully. Arkash had no qualms with hurting others, he didn't even mind killing them... So long as they were strong. Hurting some broken thing on the verge of death? That didn't sit well with him. Arkash furrowed his brow as he drew his sword. What difference did it make if they could defend themselves or not? Arkash had killed from the shadows, granting no one a chance to defend against his attacks. 'But they were crooked', he thought. 'They were vile, abusive creatures... This one can't do such things anymore.' He looked long at the man who hadn't the strength to even lift his head, then his gaze to the Druskai's bare chest with an uncomfortable frown.
"What are you waiting for?" The noble called to break Arkash's focus. "Cut him, and pay attention to the first blood that comes from his wound... Close attention."
Arkash sighed, then did as the noble instructed. He pressed his blade into the pectoral of the man, keeping his arm fully extended. The husk didn't waver, barely even registering the pain of being cut open. Quickly, he poised his blade and flicked his wrist to slash through some few inches of skin, creating a wound that wept slowly. The blood there, Arkash noticed, was brimming with energy for just a second or two. It was powerful, like some sort of catalyst, calling out to him. He blinked then. What was he thinking? Did he really consider someone's lifeblood a tool? He seemed to think like such in his own head.
The Druskai wheezed, acknowledging the damage to his pectoral. "Good. Now, try and weave an etheric layer of skin over your target. Try latching it onto the wound to start, and have it grow to encapsulate his entire body."
Arkash furrowed his brow. What did that have to do with blood? Ether skin? No matter. Raphael was the expert, not him. He focused intently on the wound. It was rich with power, that much was easy to see. He furrowed his brow, and began to attempt to latch his ether onto it.
"...It might help if I specified that the point of this second skin is to leech any and all wounds on the target for blight. It's like an investment," Raphael spoke after turning a page in his book, then looked up at the Rathor.
That explanation seemed to make more sense, but how he'd go about constructing it, he didn't know. With a furrow to his brow, he established a sort of ether leech on the wound and began to spread it all over the man's body. it was seamless, totally encapsulating, and invisible. In seconds, he felt the minimal drip of power add to his own from the Druskai's one gash. "I feel it," Arkash spoke at last. "I've got a leeching skin on him," he declared.
Raphael nodded. "Good," he spoke with a scratch to his chin. "You'll apparently get even more out of it if the target is bleeding even more... Why don't you cut him again?"
He hadn't anticipated that the mage would want to get started so quickly. Of course, he knew that Raphael meant business; there was nothing else he seemed to want more than the mark Arkash had on the surface of his skull. But even so, didn't the man have a job to do? Any sort of life at all? Maybe two days was all it took to clear his schedule, but he doubted it considering how busy the noble made himself out to be.
Then again, Raphael was a noble. Arkash sincerely doubted the man had ever done a real day's work in his life. His definition of busy was probably not as severe as Arkash's. So, it made sense that on the afternoon of the second day, they were on their way to the dungeons.
Druskai raiders often attached the fortress from the seas. It was usually nothing that the mages stationed there couldn't handle, but the survivors were brought in as prisoners. For what reasons, Arkash could only imagine. Regardless of the purpose they usually served, Arkash was going to be practicing his magic on them under Raphael's supervision and guidance. he didn't know what to expect, or what sorts of magic he was going to learn, but he was excited. Arkash knew he'd only scraped the surface of what a blood mage was capable of.
He waited at the grody subterranean gate with his arms crossed, leaning against the nearest wall that the Halamire would allow him to. He caught them glancing at his True form on more than one occasion, but didn't really pay them much more mind than a glance back. He couldn't be sure what they knew, but he was fairly certain they didn't know he was the tan-skinned slave from before. All he could tell for sure was that they knew he was repulsive and were it not for the Veir's orders, they would be on him like homeless people on bread.
Even if he didn't care for the human morsels that waited as guards of the dungeon, he couldn't deny that their gazes unsettled him to some degree. None of it was for show, of course. Arkash was anything but open with what made him uncomfortable, but who wouldn't be uncomfortable to find that the tall, trained killers were taking turns watching him? If he were a more empathetic Rath, he would have taken the time to understand that they were probably bored, and had nothing else to look at but the engraved stone of the halls all day every day. Though Arkash found the dampness and the curious dripping noise interesting for some small spell, he didn't think he'd like listening to it all day every day.
He shared their excitement when the sound of boots on the staircase above began to descend with a steady increase in volume. Arkash looked up to see the shadow against the warm glow of a lantern, then squinted in the darkness as Raphael's shape came into view above him. "Oh! It's good that you're so punctual my new, reptilian apprentice!" He called from atop the stairs. Arkash grimaced. "I hope these overpaid sentries didn't give you any sort of trouble, that would be most unpleasant."
Arkash would have appreciated the call in his defense if Raphael wasn't so over the top about it. Instead, he was made to cringe. "No trouble, my Veir," he returned with a shake of his head. When the man, at last, stood beside him before the door, Arkash exhaled through his nose, then looked to the guards. In the lord's presence, their discipline was on an entirely different level. They didn't once look at him, or look at anything that wasn't directly in front of them. 'Best behavior', he thought.
"You're both dismissed, go elsewhere," the lord declared with a wave of his hand. At once and in unison, the two guards stomped, turned, and fell out of the formation in marching order.
"Dogs..." Arkash muttered under his breath as he watched them ascend the stairs.
"Quite," the noble returned, then stepped forward and undid the latch of the dungeon gate. When it swung open, Arkash was allowed to see a portion of the inside. When Raphael motioned him to enter first, he stepped inside and looked about. The Prison was two stories with a large open area in the center of the lowest floor. It was largely square, with some sort of stone platform to run the perimeter in some sort of stone walkway. Arkash could see the alcoves of prison cells, carved into the walls with ruddy iron bars to guard whatever captives laid behind. It smelled awful, not unlike a sewer with its intense, eye-burning stench of feces, urine, and decay. There was some call of pain as the lantern light illuminated the dark that the prisoners had otherwise been submerged in. "Filthy things, aren't they?"
"What?" Arkash asked as he looked back on the mage.
"Druskai," he elaborated. "Elves in general, disgusting creatures," he spoke with a curl of his nose, then proceeded to walk past the rathor, and down the stairs. Arkash furrowed his brow with some level of concern, then followed after the man. Raphael carried a lot of hate with him, it seemed. Arkash scarcely saw people who were so open with their disgust, but it seemed that the revelation of Arkash's true nature was a cause to let his own nature see the light of day.
As he descended the stairs, he came to realize that a lot of the cages were empty. Others housed decaying corpses. Some of them appeared to have been there for a long time, to a point where enough skin around the stomach had rotted away to allow the mess of organs inside to spill out in a pile around the midsection of the corpse. With his nightvision constantly active, Arkash saw it all in graphic detail. He grimaced with a squint, then looked at the noble ahead of him, who seemed to be checking each cell with the light of his lantern, as if he couldn't remember which ones were full, and which were empty. "...Which ones are full?" Arkash asked without expecting an answer.
"Don't know..." Replied the necromancer. "Most of them were alive when I was last down here, but I haven't needed extra sinew foam in a while..."
"Sinew foam?" Arkash quizzed as he caught up with the mage.
"Yes, it's what you make when you use the mortar and pestle. It adapts to the material it first touches after being dispensed from the gun."
Arkash blinked. "...You use these guys to make sinew foam?"
"Well yes, why else would I keep them around?" The Druskai were livestock to Raphael, nothing else. Arkash looked on with wide eyes and found the bony corpse of some other Druskai... Except they weren't dead. His heartbeat still thumped in his chest. Arkash focused on that soft beating while he stared at the skinny male, face down in some puddle in his cell. "That one's alive?" The Veir asked, having noticed Arkash's intent stare. Hesitantly, he nodded a bit. "Excellent, he'll make the perfect guinea pig."
With that, the Veir opened the door of the cage, then strut to the center of the room where he pulled up a chair and set some bag down beside it. "...What are you doing?" Arkash asked with some concern.
"Oh! Apologies, my assistants normally know what to do on this part. Could you fetch the lad and bring him to the chair? Much obliged." Raphael spoke somewhat sarcastically while he knelt beside the long bag and began to tamper with its contents. Arkash looked between the chair, a rickety old thing that lay littered with stains of various sizes and colors, and the Druskai who barely breathed on the floor. He supposed it was a mercy, whatever they were going to do to him.
So, Arkash stepped into the cell and slipped his claws under the man's arms. The older male was very light; almost no weight to him at all. Did they starve in those cells? He looked to Raphael, then shook his head. If they were just there for material, he supposed that Raphael didn't need them to eat. Dead flesh functioned just as well in the mortar and pestle, as he'd discovered. Carefully, Arkash dragged the wheezing husk to the chair and set him down. The man hung limp, head draped over the backrest while the rest of his body dripped with what smelled to be his own piss. Arkash looked with concern to the noble, who handed him a rag thoughtfully. Arkash took no time to rub his claws dry, but the stink clung to him.
"Right... So blood magic," Raphael began and clasped his hands together before he drew some lengthy steel scabbard from his bag, and the pommel of Arkash's sword stayed jutting from the end. His eyes widened a little at its image, for he hadn't seen it in some time. "I would guess that you're at least Tier Three in the mark; you've clearly already mastered Suffuse, and Sway, right?" Arkash nodded carefully. "Good, then we'll try some Journeyman-Level abilities. Have you heard of the Razor?" Arkash shook his head. "Ether leech?" Another shake of his head. "Hemorrhage?"
"None of them," Arkash spoke with yet another shake of his head.
"Good. We'll start there," The mage declared, and drew some dark, leather-bound book from his floored bag, and kicked the bag to slide across the ground, likely out of the way. He passed the sword to Arkash without warning, and Arkash shot out his claws to catch it. "That thing is well made; cut through most scabbards I tried to put it in... The sheath actually weighs more than the sword now."
Arkash grinned at the compliment; he hadn't tried to make a good sword when he crafted it, he just knew what sort of balance suited him, and his blood made for good, strong weapons and tools. "Thanks, I guess," he returned. "I used to cut up Argent Knights with his thing."
"I seriously don't doubt it," the mage returned with a kind smile. "So... Start by cutting some sort of wound in the target's chest. We're going to start with Ether leech." The noble was nose deep in his book, using the light of his lantern to read through the pages in the gloomy darkness.
He looked upon the 'target' and softened his brow remorsefully. Arkash had no qualms with hurting others, he didn't even mind killing them... So long as they were strong. Hurting some broken thing on the verge of death? That didn't sit well with him. Arkash furrowed his brow as he drew his sword. What difference did it make if they could defend themselves or not? Arkash had killed from the shadows, granting no one a chance to defend against his attacks. 'But they were crooked', he thought. 'They were vile, abusive creatures... This one can't do such things anymore.' He looked long at the man who hadn't the strength to even lift his head, then his gaze to the Druskai's bare chest with an uncomfortable frown.
"What are you waiting for?" The noble called to break Arkash's focus. "Cut him, and pay attention to the first blood that comes from his wound... Close attention."
Arkash sighed, then did as the noble instructed. He pressed his blade into the pectoral of the man, keeping his arm fully extended. The husk didn't waver, barely even registering the pain of being cut open. Quickly, he poised his blade and flicked his wrist to slash through some few inches of skin, creating a wound that wept slowly. The blood there, Arkash noticed, was brimming with energy for just a second or two. It was powerful, like some sort of catalyst, calling out to him. He blinked then. What was he thinking? Did he really consider someone's lifeblood a tool? He seemed to think like such in his own head.
The Druskai wheezed, acknowledging the damage to his pectoral. "Good. Now, try and weave an etheric layer of skin over your target. Try latching it onto the wound to start, and have it grow to encapsulate his entire body."
Arkash furrowed his brow. What did that have to do with blood? Ether skin? No matter. Raphael was the expert, not him. He focused intently on the wound. It was rich with power, that much was easy to see. He furrowed his brow, and began to attempt to latch his ether onto it.
"...It might help if I specified that the point of this second skin is to leech any and all wounds on the target for blight. It's like an investment," Raphael spoke after turning a page in his book, then looked up at the Rathor.
That explanation seemed to make more sense, but how he'd go about constructing it, he didn't know. With a furrow to his brow, he established a sort of ether leech on the wound and began to spread it all over the man's body. it was seamless, totally encapsulating, and invisible. In seconds, he felt the minimal drip of power add to his own from the Druskai's one gash. "I feel it," Arkash spoke at last. "I've got a leeching skin on him," he declared.
Raphael nodded. "Good," he spoke with a scratch to his chin. "You'll apparently get even more out of it if the target is bleeding even more... Why don't you cut him again?"
