Shovash arrives with her company back at the Cenotaph, where the core settlement of the Mutilated Corpse tribe is in shambles. There are gaps in the palisade around it, and a sullen, smoking fire that has devoured much of the eastern half of the settlement. Orcs are hurrying around the place, trying to control the fire. There don't seem to be enough of them, though, for the size of the settlement.

"I feel like you would have mentioned it if this place were this far gone when you left," Aiva says casually. Calm as a stone in the chaos.

  "I left for an hour, replies her friend bitterly. "One. Hour."

  Shovash starts toward the fire, leaving Aiva and Ragnar to decide for themselves whether to participate in the cleanup. As she walks, she grows taller with every step until she towers over the largest of her warriors, until between the ash and soot of her skin and the firey glow of her tattoos, she looks like one of the burning buildings had gotten up to walk around as a demon. And then she starts pulling water out of the air with her bare hands, palms chanting in unison, until the wave obediently following at her heel looms double her new height. She waves it forward before raising her clan flag high enough to be seen across the camp.

  "Bring me the injured!" she bellows. "And Graxs, if he lives!"

One huge water elemental, rod-boosted to gargantuan and given the agile template
This message was last edited by the player at 16:56, Sat 01 Feb 2020.

Leaving Shovash to muster her followers back into whatever semblance of order she expected of them, Ragnar takes the air and begins a slow survey of the camp from above. What he's looking for, he couldn't quite say - some indication, perhaps, either of what caused the current state of ruin or indications of further trouble yet to come.

Several of the orcs begin to rally around Shovash, including most of those who had become her local lieutenants - Arkr leads their group despite heavy gashes in his arms and chest, and personally hauls several of the wounded to her. They are cut, bruised, burned, clawed, but alive. By the time she reaches the fire and directs a wall of water at it, he has apparently finished bringing in those too injured to walk.

He kneels before her. "Shovash Godsbane, Mistress of Fiends, Planes-Strider, Breaker of Vigil," he says, his tone deeply formal. "My chief has betrayed his people. In his cowardice he fled from battle when the dead attacked, abandoning his position before the eyes of gods and men. I will not grace him with my axe any longer. I ask that I may join under your banner, leaving the Mutilated Corpse tribe behind me and fighting for your cause."

Meanwhile, above the ground, Ragnar sees signs of a massed attack coming from the direction of the Cenotaph. It looks like tracks of the undead...and they dragged the corpses back with them.

  Shovash leans down just enough to place a palm lightly on Arkr's head and gives him a scrutinizing look. "You doubted me, at first. I saw your heart plainly enough. You watched me for a chance to prove my weakness." Her tone is simple and direct, only just shy of accusatory. But then her lips twist into a wry half-smile, and a radiance from her hand prompts the worst of his wounds to heal rapidly, some scarring over completely.

  "Your doubt then makes you more valuable to me now. Only a weak wrist complains the ax is too heavy; in my hands, you will split boulders. The Blood Path tribe welcomes you. Now prepare to strike back. All of you." With those words, Shovash turns her attention to the rest of the injured. Standing upright again, she drives the butt of her staff into the ground toward them, making the mounting rings jangle and kicking up a dense spray of sand. When the spray hits them, their flesh becomes like sand as well, and the dust beneath them rises slowly to fill the gaps.

Healing touch is 24-28hp, and this is one of twenty available. Particulate form from the staff is 105hp for 21 people, and she can do that three times if needed. The survivors are coming back to full health.

The Cenotaph would be a nice hunting ground, but Shovash had invited him here for a reason - to go poaching without waiting for her and her minions would be rude, to say the least. That meant Ragnar had a bit of time to kill before it was time to kill; dropping back to the camp, he headed into the ruined eastern half of the settlement. It was unlikely that any of the orcs killed here would leave ghosts behind, he could at least do the courtesy of checking. They'd properly be Shovash's to deal with anyways.

Only when Shovash has already healed the survivors completely does Graxs finally show his face. The chieftain walks up, surrounded by most of his inner circle of warriors. He has a sorrowful expression on his face which vanishes when he sees Shovash's, and Arkr's, and visibly realizes that she has already heard what happened.

"If you expect me to kneel, you will be disappointed," he says, his tone surly.

Aiva doesn't say a word, but the rougarou's expression is calm - lethally calm. She closes the distance to the disgraced chieftain without saying a word. She seizes him by the shoulder, twists his arm into a hold behind him, and by virtue of raw strength forces him onto his knees.

Only then does she speak, in fluent Orcish. "My apologies, Shovash; normally I would leave it to you to take the initiative with your people. But there is nothing I hate quite so much as a coward."

  Shovash stands taller and stiffer when she first sees Graxs approaching, wings spread high in an unapologetic threat display, and tattoos streaming smoke. There is considerable more of the demon than the orc in her appearance just at the moment. It's really just like the last time she had to put him back in his place. The staff vanishes with a flick of her tail, and a green glass knife, faintly glowing, takes its place in her hand.

  When Aiva rushes forward, Shovash's eyes follow the huntress, then drop back to the petulant chieftain, with little emotion visible beyond annoyance. She takes a step forward, then takes a moment to cast a warning glare at Graxs' inner circle before continuing. "You're lucky she changed your mind," came the sneering response once she stood over him directly. "I was just going to kill you on the spot, sending you on to the gods as a spineless deserter. But I've realized you deserve better."

  Crouching, she grabs him by the throat and lifts his face up to hers, just barely giving Aiva time to let go first. The weight doesn't seem to be a strain at all. She snarls. "You will bleed to protect your tribe today, despite your cowardice. They deserve it from you, and I will ensure they get it on the altar, since you failed them in battle."

Graxs glares with hatred naked in his eyes, and says nothing as the ritual is prepared. Several of his inner circle look like they want to intervene, but Shovash's sheer presence is enough to dissuade them, at least long enough. It probably doesn't hurt that two others look ready to wield the knife themselves. Apparently even his close followers are disgusted at his cowardice.

  If the chieftain was content to be silent, Shovash was clearly satisfied to leave him that way. Once she got him chained down to the largest flat rock in the area and filled him with the drive to prove his worth, she largely ignored him while she prepared the pyre. The only thing that suggested this could be anything but a practical necessity was letting the fire rise high enough to lick his skin before she opened his throat with the knife. She let the shaman take over and perform whatever rites he found appropriate, from there, as with the dead of the last several days.

  She, meanwhile, turned her attention to the enormous magic circle nearby. She had drawn it in her own blood, but it was silver that stained the earth. As the offering burned, she chanted the forms of her need and shaped with her hands the twists in the boundary of the Material that would extend all the way to the Boneyard.

Assuming typical stats, I've done the rolling already for a young adult crypt dragon, sr and will save. If it attempts to charisma past the diagram, the dc isssssss... 43. So good luck with that. Though honestly, she's interrupting its day to recruit it to a grand hunt.

The shaman, in a truly stunning display of disdain for the deceased, refuses to perform funeral rites for the chieftain. Several of his followers glance at each other with open snarls at this, but they can't exactly force the shaman to do it, and they can't perform the rites themselves, either.

The circle is drawn in blood and silver, the way is opened...and the call is answered. A dragon, scales pale grey like weathered bone and stretched tight over an emaciated body, steps through into the circle. It barely fits. It looks at Shovash, tilting its head to the side, and then speaks in a voice that can only be described as sepulchral.

"You sacrificed one to bring this one here. Your sacrifice is worthy - the sacrificed allowed the cycle to be broken, in a most grievous way, and his death is a righteous one. Tell this one, what do you call this one here to do?"

  Before she responds, Shovash actually bows, though not far, somewhere between the angles of acknowledgment and respect. She never takes her eyes off the dragon, of course.  One doesn't do that. "We are encamped near the base of the Cenotaph," she begins in formal draconic. "—with the armies of the Whispering Tyrant gathered beneath our feet. We are the conquerors of Lastwall; our greater strength proved their inadequacy at their own reason for being, and it will be our axes that exterminate what they could only contain. But the price in orc blood has been high, and we need time to rally the force to finish the job."

  She pauses briefly to cast her eyes over the gathered tribe, and doesn't quite manage to suppress a proud smile. It remains when she returns her attention to the summoning. "I want you to accompany me and my allies into the crypts, to heed my direction faithfully, and to guard my Children who gather here, for a month and a day. I want you to send lingering souls on to judgment en masse and dismantle their mindless puppets. And I want you to leave one particular graveknight to my disposal. I will support you as any of my allies, or of my children, at your option. And I will press this campaign beyond your time here, until there are no servants left to wake Tar-baphon." Finished, she approaches the circle with her tail poised to sever it.

  "Are these terms suitable?"

The dragon considers for a long moment, and then speaks. "This one accepts. Direct this one and this one will send the restless dead to their judgment." And it smiles.

  "Then we are sealed," announces the summoner. She doesn't cut the circle; it burns away from the spells' release. The tail, then...? Only a few of the observers might even know that, though, and she doesn't leave time for questions.

  "Ragnar!" she shouts, stepping away from the whole ritual space. "Have you found anything important, scouting? And come meet my dragon; you'll have a lot in common." She doesn't exactly leave time for answers, either, before turning to address the remaining orcs.

  "Rest until nightfall, at least. I want you restored, and I want you angry. Our dead are defiled, and our living are treated as cattle in a pen. No one gets away with this. I fought the gods themselves to stop them throwing your lives away for their own glory! I will go down and slay death if I must! My children belong to no dusty carcass, no defeated prisoner, and no cowardly parasite! Orcs belong to orcs. So make ready to prove it. And I want any of you who think you will lead the Mutilated Corpse to come to my tent in half an hour. We cannot afford a fight to the death for it." She stalks off then, with a wave for her entourage to follow, toward the charred section of the camp where her tent had been.

The entourage moves into the tent (including Arkr, who seems at a bit of a loss now that he's been accepted into the Blood Path). Half an hour later, three orcs show themselves in. One is the stereotype: a huge brute of a man, carrying a greataxe and with a distinctive gleam of barely-controlled wrath in his eyes. The second is smaller, with a wry smile, and a slender sword on his hip.

The third is an outlier. A woman, for one, though she's bigger than the second arrival. Unarmed, for another, despite heavy muscles that suggest a fighter. She has a blank expression, and unlike the other two, she bows to Shovash, short and stiff, never looking away from the Witch-Queen.

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 16):

Now that Shovash's matter of internal discipline is dealt with - always good for outsiders to remain uninvolved in such matters - Ragnar descends to join her again.

"Both the corpses and the ghosts left behind have been taken back into the Cenotaph."

  "Sit.  Be comfortable," Shovash said to Arkr with a tap of her tail on a scorched rock beside her.  Then she turned to Ragnar.  "The bodies are unfortunate, but with any luck, they'll become empty things, just puppets of meat.  Any whose souls are still trapped within, like the ghosts, we will set free as soon..."

  Something about the thought tripped her up, and her gaze drifted off into the distance as she considered it.  Whatever it may have been, a toothy smile developed ever so slowly as the idea took shape, and when she finally returned to the conversation, she looked exultant.  "We will set them free as soon as we meet them.  They will not be conscripted by the enemy, if I have any say in it.  I don't know if any of you have ways of destroying the eternal, but if so, I want my people spared that fate.  Did you get any sense of the raiders' numbers, Ragnar?"

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 19):

"Five hundred and twenty-eight attackers exited the Cenotaph. However many survived to retreat is unclear, as they followed the same path, but they left none of their own dead behind either. It is highly unlikely that they committed more than a pittance of their total numbers to the raid."

"As for the eternal, I can do only what any mortal is capable of, destroy whatever corporeal shell is being animated and allow the animating spirit to depart."

  "Yes. Any mortal..." Shovash looked thoughtful in the way that usually meant some new blasphemy was in the works. She had already mixed beyond the excitement and into whatever planning it was going to take: her eyes were more distracted than mirthful. But then she was back in the moment and especially serious about it. She leaned over to whisper something to her newest follower before continuing.

  "We were born to fight in tunnels. And ruin comes for who it will, wherever they hide." She patted Arkr's forearm and inclined her head toward Aiva, but she addressed Ragnar and their enormous, nameless ally. "But if there are supports that would make your power more overwhelming in a grand catacomb, tell me now what you need from me. And then finish your own preparations while I restore leadership to this tribe.

  "The halls have been ceremonial so far, not properly fortified or trapped, so we can focus on taking initiative and counter-ambushes over long-scale caution. It's the undead way; they always have bodies to hurl at a threat. With only five of us, they won't be able to replenish their numbers as they'd prefer. Just make sure if you are injured to let me restore you, and kill them as suddenly as possible. The walls knit dead flesh back together and sicken our wounds."

"I could use a little of your special touch, but beyond that I don't have any special requirements. And I'll leave your people's souls be." The wolf-woman seems a little disappointed at this, but perks up a moment later. "Of course, we're sure to see other ghosts down there that don't belong to you. So Amaranthine won't go hungry."

  Shovash grins broadly and licks her tusk with a bright red tongue. With little further to say, she spends some time sorting and replacing spell components, cleaning her weapons and casting tools, and honing the teeth on her haramaki. That last one involves reaching with a whetstone into a space that should have been completely full of her own body, as well as the one growing inside hers. It gets even more Wrong when she tests the sharpness with a large tongue that emerges from that void. She looks up when the hopefuls eventually arrive and gives them each a canny appraisal.

  "You look like you can all fight well enough, in your own ways." She gives a nod of approval and then stands up. She examines the musculature of the biggest as she walks a slow circlevery closely around him. More than once, the tip of her tail nips at a flank, a bicep, or some other bulk. The smallest, she gives more space and keeps her eyes on the small movements of his hands or the shifting of his feet. When she gets to the woman, she pauses. That one, she only sniffs at before returning to her spot in front of them all.

  "I want to be very clear. Graxs did not die on the altar for not dying in battle. A new chief every month makes a tribe weak and easy to take over. He died because he protected no one but himself, and he pulled some of the strongest warriors away from the battle to do it. He would not face danger with his people, so they are no longer his. I need to know the next chief will not sell the lives of dozens so cheaply." She sniffed the air again, and it brought a satisfied smile to her face. "So you, then you, and then you: tell me about the most difficult enemy you have ever defeated. And then...

  Tell me about your most humiliating defeat."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:48, Fri 21 Feb 2020.

All three of the orcs seem visibly uncomfortable with the intensity of Shovash's focus as she examines them, one after the next. When she tells them what she wants to hear, none of them look happy, but they don't look as though they will protest.

The muscular one speaks first. "The most difficult man I ever fought was a human, from the far north - the Lands of the Linnorm Kings. He struck me twice with a greataxe, here and here, before I split his shoulders from his spine. I wear the scars he gave me with pride." He hesitates, obviously unhappy, then admits, "But I lost when I challenged Graxs for the tribe. He beat me senseless and laughed, and didn't even give me the honor of seeing me as a threat." He falls silent, glowering.

Then comes the lithe man, whose voice is surprisingly deep for his slender frame. "For me, victory came in a raid against another tribe. I killed three warriors before the witch doctor came forth and sent magic against me. I danced through the flame and the lightning to pierce him through the heart. But when the Mutilated Corpse went against the Broken Tree tribe, I lost two fingers and a warrior broke my arm. I had to flee the field to stay alive." He shrugs.

The woman speaks last, and slowest. "I suppose the most difficult foe I ever defeated was a human paladin who came to pursue a claim that my first tribe had attacked a caravan. We had, but they were in our land and ignored our order that they leave. I ended up clawing his throat out after a lengthy battle. But the same moment was the most humiliating loss I ever experienced, because I had failed to resolve it without wasted resources." She smiles, tusky and feral. "Killing is an answer, but it is rarely the optimal one. There are more efficient ways to deal with problems."

  "Good. You must know how to lose, or you will do it badly, and the first time will cost you everything." Shovash smiles. At the men, anyway. The woman... She gives the woman a sidelonglook, not suspicious, but communicating distinctly less openness. "And you must be able to learn from those losses, or you will repeat them."

  She turns first to the smaller orc. He did still have a few inches on her, but she tended to occupy more space than she took up. "When you are injured, in dire straits, what will you do? What assurance does the tribe have that you will not abandon them as Graxs did? Without that certainty, they will not follow.

  "And with only one type of strength, you cannot lead," she continues, flicking a wing in the direction of the biggest. "There will always be someone stronger if you search. When that someone comes, who can overpower you, will you stand and die with glory, leaving your people without your strength and leadership? Or will you make a fool of that greater power? How?

  "What. Did. You. Learn?" she emphasizes, taking in both of the men at once. She keeps her attention on them, too, as she crosses behind the woman and sets one hand on a meaty shoulder. Her demand comes at a hiss. "And tell me, as carefully as you just hid the truth, why I should ever think of trusting you with my most precious resources."

The two men glance at each other, but it's the woman who responds first, softly, but with a great deal of passion in her tone. "You shouldn't. Trust is a fool's choice. But I can tell you this. I watched my tribe die for my mistakes once. I will set this world on fire before I let that happen again."

  "Daughter," Shovash whispers, pitched like the answer to a question. The sharp edge of accusation had turned fiercely appreciative in an instant. Even before she inclined her head to touch the woman's shoulder with her crown of horns, she had managed to go from standing behind to standing with by the merest change of posture.

  "So she learned to focus on her real priorities," said Shovash, addressing the two with tied tongues. "Speak up, you two. These aren't trick questions."

"I learned not to fight battles I can't win. Gotta pick and choose when to fight, and see when you ain't got a chance at it." The muscular man shrugs. "There's a reason I ain't looking to duel for this if you say no. I know some of what you done."

"For me," the slender man says softly, "The lesson had to do with practicality. Understanding that, ah, resources need to be sent where they'll do something. Knowing that one has lost, one can retreat rather than die for glory. Had I been in Graxs's position, I'd have pulled the whole tribe away, rather than just myself."

  Shovash's smile only grew broader at those answers. "My sons, welcome," she whispers, then steps back to where she faces all three of then again. With her back a little straighter and her posture more open generally, she makes one sweeping gesture that encompasses the group.

  "So you have all learned the same lesson, then. That we are most important. Not glory, or pride, or even the thrill of battle. Those are vital; they make life good, and I want them for you. But I want you, first. There will be time to fight each other when we have conquered. For now, if we don't think bigger than who is the strongest among us, we. Won't. Be. The Strongest. Our gods, our gods, lead together. And so will you."

  She held up a hand to forestall any objections, then pointed with it at the big warrior. "I want a warleader who knows when to fight. I need your wisdom, guiding your might to victory." The smaller, next. "I want a master of raids who knows how to do only what is needed and stay out of traps. I need your cunning: it makes your sting deadly. And I want a warden of the camp," she finished, directing it at her fellow hellspawn. "—who can inspire courage, to make our defenses into a wall our enemies will break themselves on. I need your resolve to be as endless as your vigor."

  Art that, she paused for a deep breath, and the exultant tone gave way to a somber one, some time during. "Your tribe needs these things. Your family. The orcs who will feast with you after a good battle, and who will rage in your honor when you have died. I make my choice for the good of the Mutilated Corpse. If this is to much to expect, tell me now, and I will set a challenge to select one of you. Do not accept your place and betray it with constant fighting among yourselves."

The three orcs look at each other, and consider for a long moment. Then, in turn, each of them nods. "Reckon I can live with that. Not like the chief don't already share power with the shaman, right? So long's I'm the one in charge'f my stuff, it isn't important whether I have the longest title." His expression goes contemplative for a moment. "Reckon that's why I stepped forward back then, too, y'know? Because Graxs was always so focused one being higher, he had to shove everyone's head in the dirt. Treated us like slaves, but we're orcs."

The other two nod emphatically. It appears that everyone is in agreement on this point.

  "You're damned right you are." Shovash looked more than pleased, but the time for celebrating was already spent. She waved them toward the rest of the tribe as she turned back. "I'll be here for several days yet, to smooth the transition. And I'll make the announcement before heading into the catacombs. I'll be counting on you. Don't make me have to burn the world down.

  "Ragnar! Aiva! Take That One with you, and I'll meet you there. Don't mistake the leechers for real undead, if any were fortunate enough to survive. I was trying to cultivate that family." After an exceptionally dark look directed at no one, her attention settled on her newest adoptee, with a mix of proud and predatory in the way she leered at him. "Come, Arkr. You will be my emissary to this tribe, soon enough. You should be seen with me when I deliver instructions."

Ragnar and Aiva go to the entrance of the Cenotaph, Aiva conversing quite fluently That One in Draconic as she walks. Arkr falls in behind Shovash at a distance suited to a respectful bodyguard, and growls at anyone who gives either of them a sidelong look.

There is, predictably, a discipline issue almost immediately with one of the orcs getting upset at the less-than-clear chain of command. Less predictably, it's the woman (who has introduced herself as Karask) who responds. She walks straight up to him, punches him in the face with an impressive degree of power if not technique, and glares at him. "Complain later. Work now." She nods to him, as though that has quite settled it, and moves on. Remarkably, he complies.

At the Cenotaph, the door gapes open like the maw of a great beast. That One stares at the entrance, and hisses. "This one can smell the dead within. Dead that should remain dead. They are waiting in the walls. The floor. They will fall upon us when we go below, and cut off the exit. It would work against the tribe here, but not against you or this one."

Ragnar merely flips open the top of his bottomless quiver, notching the first bolt of many into Greta's waiting chamber.

"And dead they shall become once again, honored wyrm. This entire structure is a affront to the proper order of things; let them come and spend themselves against us, it shall only save us the time required to hunt them down instead."

Greta, silent as usual in the presence of strangers, vibrates slightly in emphatic agreement. There's been too much talking today already, it's time for them to start shooting things.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:44, Wed 11 Mar 2020.

  It was a few minutes later when Shovash and Arkr caught up with them, he loping along at clearly magical speed and she gliding somewhat lazily above.  She at least had the courtesy to not kick up much of a dust cloud when she landed, this time.

  "Things seem stable at camp.  They'll be rebuilding and rearming themselves for some time.  Are all of you ready?"

"Always," Aiva replied with an eager smile. She stretched out a hand and her great crimson blade appeared in it, the edge gleaming with an inner light. "Let's get this party started."

She lopes off into the interior.

What follows is not a fight. Not really. A fight implies two parties of equal or near-equal threat. This is a slaughter. That One's breath alone is enough to send most of the wights, specters, and hordes of skeletons and zombies on to judgment. Ragnar and Aiva clean up anything that manages to survive the crypt dragon's work, and Shovash heals any small wounds they sustain.

The group presses downward, following the same path as before, until finally they reach the level where Uran held court. The graveknight stands alone before them in her adamantine plate, and nods politely as they walk in. "Well played," she says softly. She smiles, heavy and tusky. "Better that I fall to another of the people, I suppose, than some human paladin."

  Shovash steps forward without a word; the sneering look around the damaged court says enough. This is not a meeting of peers. That opportunity was squandered. She strikes the ground hard with the butt of her staff, like planting a flag, and the other one stretches backward, palm gaping with the same mouth that she disgorged a lash from on her last visit.

  "'The People? No, you defiled those and lost your right to that name. They are My People now, and I cast you out. Here. Now. In what was the seat of your power, once. You are not an orc." She pauses there and spares a glance over each shoulder at the assembled hunting party. Her nostrils flare when she turns back to Uran. "Will you be going on to the Boneyard quietly now? Or will we have to tear you apart and scatter your dust to the winds?"

Uran visibly flinches as Shovash repudiates her and casts her out. She recovers after a moment, and those tusks, the only visible part of her face, tweak into a smile. Even without seeing the rest of her face, it seems somehow off - wry, fey, sad, bittersweet, all at once.

"I will die on my feet," she says. "It is not fit for one of the people, even one so defiled as I have become, to meet the Lady of Graves lying down." She draws her adamantine blade and strides forward slowly. Her tone, her bearing, are utterly fatalistic, and there's no doubt that she thinks this is a fight she will lose, despite all the power of long ages basking in the heart of the Cenotaph.

  Shovash just rolls her eyes at the display. "You're an idiot. You attacked my children while I was here to make peace. I'm not about to give you a death you'll feel good about. Ragnar? Aiva? She has made my condition irrelevant. Let us waste no more time; she's all yours." And then Shovash turns her back on Uran to walk back to the others.

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 39):

Ragnar steps forward slightly, flickering irregularly as he readies to call upon his curse more deeply.

"I have two questions. First, who were you before you became this? And second, did you choose to become what you are, or was it thrust upon you?"

The graveknight raises her head, a touch of pride or defiance entering her tone. "I was Uran Black-Blade, a half-orc warrior who fought for the Shattered Stone tribe of Belkzen. I earned much glory, and came to the Cenotaph to drive out the undead before I was killed and remade by them. This was all...so many long years ago, now."

Ragnar nods solemnly, and the bite of phantom thorns chews along the inside of his skin as he fades from view, his voice disembodied and directionless. "Then be at peace, Uran Black-Blade. All souls have a road to walk, even if might they stumble upon it and fall. By my hand you are risen back to your feet, ready to resume your journey into eternity."

Without further word, he sends a flurry of bolts into Uran, punching through the center of her plate in a tight cluster.

THe bolts slam home, and Uran slumps to the ground, the armor clattering on the floor of the chamber. It doesn't seem that there's an actual body inside of it. That One snorts, letting out a puff of steam, and turns its attention to Shovash. "Well done. This one thanks you for your work here today. Do you have additional need of this one currently?"

  "No, not with me.  There will be new threats below, but the most treacherous is gone now.  Rest, pray, do what keeps you most ready.  There will be further to go tonight."

  Shovash eyes the damaged armor with a sullen expression; her tail flicks about aimlessly with her irritation and reflexively scrabbles at anything the talons collide with.  A faint squeaking comes from her left hand, where the jaws she brought forth are grinding their teeth, but none of her mouths speak for the moment.

  Eventually, she spits on one of the greaves and walks past the whole pile toward the throne at the end of the hall.  There are broken bits, and gouges taken out of the stone that suggest weapons, not tools, but it's largely intact, anyway.  That doesn't last long.  As Shovash approaches, she raises her free hand toward the stone chair on the stone dais in the stone room and makes a tight fist.  "ጥፋት!"  Her hand jerks open, and the throne splits down the center in a jagged, gaping line.

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 44):

Ragnar gathers up the armor, hefting its weight experimentally before setting it back down on the ground with apparent displeasure.

"Shovash, how long do you think it will take us to fully cleanse the Cenotaph and return to the surface?"

  "Weeks, I suspect, and that's assuming the lower levels aren't warded tightly against planar travel."  She pulled her wings in tightly and turned away from the throne, back to the others.  For someone who presumed to judge who could call themselves an orc, she looked an awful lot like a demon in the dim lighting.  Her voice was tense with anger, but her posture was more like sorrow, with low shoulders and heavy steps.  "The lower floors are certain to be more dangerous, and no one truly knows the full extent of the catacombs."

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 46):

"Then let us accomplish as much as we can before turning back - the next primordial will arise in roughly five days from now."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:21, Tue 31 Mar 2020.

  She nods, and her gaze drifts out the door into the larger chambers beyond.  "With some form of advance warning of troop movements below, I could make this more of a hobby.  The enemy cannot replenish as we can, if it is rebuffed when it attempts to raid the living.  Every foray we make is a permanent loss for them.  Let's make this one profound."  Shovash approaches the empty suit of plate and begins taking it apart, pocketing the pieces one at a time as she separates them.  She doesn't move as fast as she could, especially when she pauses to consider each of them.  Her lips move silently.

Ragnar watches Shovash with the armor, but makes no move to interfere. "Take care with that armor. Mere prayer will not be sufficient to break the curse it bears, bu I will need time and conversation with our more scholarly allies to determine what will."

  She frowns and looks up at him.  "What, you mean she's still bound to it or something like that?"  Then Shovash waits only until he looks more affirmative than negative before grinning.  She doubles in size on the spot, muscles pouring out of the gaps between muscles and every sharp bit of her growing longer, thicker, more deadly-looking.  In a few seconds, she's on eye level with Ragnar and still crouching, still grinning.  She tucks the breastplate into her cleavage, through a neckline now wide enough to admit it, and it too vanishes without a trace.

  "Oh, then let's don't break the curse yet.  I have a few... finer points of rule to teach her before I let her go.  Don't worry though," she continues, standing and starting for the door back to the main halls.  She's not quite the size of the dragon now.  "I have every intention of ending her unlife, if I have to tear her soul out by hand.  Let us go deeper."

Marching on, there is another stair, and it goes deep. Very deep. Other levels branch off occasionally, stretching out into the dark, but they are mostly empty, with only one containing a legion of skeletons - hundreds, perhaps thousands - standing stock still as though awaiting orders. That One, without prompting, annihilates them with its breath in waves.

Finally, the stair comes to an end. At a guess, you're near the bottom of the canyon now, and it opens onto a lavishly decorated floor - mosaics in the floors, chandeliers of magical lights hanging from the ceiling. Moving forward, you pass through empty chambers until you reach what looks like a ballroom - complete with dancing couples. Each is a skeleton, finely dressed, moving with tireless, mechanical grace to the same music, though you hear nothing. At the far end is a curtained doorway into another room.

"To some extent, but I would not advise carrying it on your person, or in contact with anyone you value. Graveknight armor is not picky about whose flesh it harvests for raw material."

Seeing the tableau ahead, Ragnar eyes it curiously, then fades from view again in preparation for what he expects will be a fight beyond the curtained barrier.

  "No, no, of course not.  Not when I have a perfectly good stone wall to embed it in.  Let's go."  And she went.

---

  As their going revealed more and more empty halls, big enough for giants to pass comfortably, occupied by dust and cobwebs now, Shovash grew only more wary.  She didn't quite jump at shadows—really, it had been two years since she had so much as flinched—but her search of each deeper floor was more obsessively thorough.  She actually looked relieved to round a corner and come face to face with an entire army.

...until they failed to attack.  She snorted in disgust, at that and gave up all her caution for peevish boredom while her dragon companion saved itself weeks of future work in a matter of minutes.  By the time they reached the ball room, she was in no mood to appreciate the artistry.

  "የድንጋይ ወታደር," she barked and laid a hand on Arkr's shoulder, and this time he grew along with her, though he was the only one who hardened into obsidian in the process.  The dim glow in his joints when he moved, like magma shining through, did resemble her tattoos.  Shovash just marched toward the dancers without an explanation and vanished the same way, reappearing at the curtain slightly under a twenty-count later.  "Come on.  I was told that someone drove Uran up from the lower reaches over her failed ambitions.  There had better be a Someone here."  And she went.

"There undoubtedly is. Such a pointlessly maudlin display is the waste of necromantic power only seen in the oldest of abominations. It'll be a pleasure to send them onward to end this tacky piece of performance art alone."

Happy to let Shovash take the lead and draw attention, he slips in after her past the curtain. She is clearly hoping for a fight, Ragnar simply hopes the fight will not take too long. He has set himself a tight deadline to meet with Geb's minion, enough that whatever consequences come from the encounter can be resolved before the next Primordial event.

You move through the curtain, and find a throne room not so unlike Uran's above, but more elaborately decorated, with a mosaic of the night sky in the floor and tapestries on the walls. In the throne lounges a human-sized figure, gaunt and terrible, with ice woven through its flesh like armor. Its eyes burn with pale blue light, and its skin is very pale.

It smiles as you walk in, with teeth that are long and sharp as a shark's. "Hello, hello, what have we here?" it says, standing.

  "The queen above!" Shovash bellows at it, not even slowing her stride. Every step gets another name—"Mistress of Fiends, Godsbane, Whore of Belkzen, the doom of Lastwall," and so on—until she stands close enough to feel the creature's chill on her face. She makes for an interesting contrast, with flesh the colors of ash and char, shot through with streaks of fire. It stands as tall as her navel.

  "Your waiting army is dust, the spectres dispersed, and the orcs you stole from me sent on to the ancestors." But with the context clear, she calms, or at least lowers her voice. "Tell me what you know of Uran Black-blade."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:14, Tue 31 Mar 2020.

The icy creature looks puzzled for a moment. "What orcs? Uran...Black-Blade? I don't...wait, no, I do recognize that name. She was one of my higher ranking lieutenants for a time. Then she rebelled, and I cast her out. I assumed she got herself unmade decades ago. As for the orcs you mention, I've not added any orcs to my court in some time, nor have I lost any, so I don't know what you're referring to." It gestures, simply, and a few chairs made of ice appear before the throne.

<blue>"Would you care to sit, queen of the lands above? I would not have it said that I am less than a courteous host."

The air around the frozen undead is brutally cold, cold as an arctic winter.

OOC: Shovash takes 15 cold damage before any resistance from the cold aura around the winterwight.

  "Thank you," Shovash responds in a grim tone. "That settles a question of which traitor to believe." She glances at the chairs, then back over her shoulder at Arkr, Aiva, the dragon... but not Ragnar. She is wearing a sympathetic smile when she turns back to their host.

  "But surely you do not mistake this for a social call, or even a diplomatic one. You have a very short time to persuade my companions that leaving you intact will never result in the tomb of Tar-Baphon being opened, and I suspect they will be quite skeptical. Please, begin." She takes half a step to the side, just enough to visually remove herself from the audience of any response. Not even out of the chill, though frost continues to form on her skin and flake away when she moves.

The wight...laughs softly. "Oh, believe me, if I could have opened the Tyrant's tomb I would in a blink of your eyes. But the fact that I didn't in all the ages since he was imprisoned should tell you I couldn't. He laid a geas on me, along with his other lieutenants, not to leave these walls until he returned to lead us out. One does not simply shrug off the Tyrant's hand, as you might imagine, and so that geas has remained for all these years. I can no more step outside these walls than a wolf can flap its legs and fly." It makes a vague gesture. "I am told he has left his tomb now, though, and that he will soon return to reclaim his legions. So perhaps your companions would be better served worrying about that, hm?"

  The sympathy in Shovash's smile turns wry at that, nearly friendly. Now, she actually does take that seat, and lays her staff across her lap to make a less aggressive chat of it. "I regret that we won't have time to discuss all the ironies of that. I truly do. I'll give you the tragedy first, then—your eternity is about to end because Uran could not check her urge to betray for even a week. You should have simply destroyed her all those centuries ago. I assure you, though: I will subject her to worse than she has the cunning to do, herself. Your tyrant hero will still find no army awaiting him, if indeed he walks, but Uran will suffer for causing that loss."

  The conjurer shrugs. There's no announcing the end of millennia of existence in gentle terms, and the two abominations are not allies, much less friends. Still, her voice carries nearly as much sincere regard as when she addresses her own followers. "And there is farce in this. Enough to be a comfort, I hope. The entire history of a whole nation of humans, and humans of the most self-important sort, has been a complete fraud. My people warred with them for fifty generations before my husband and I broke their final stand. And for all that time, we were only a distraction from the mission that defined their lives: preventing you from reaching the Tyrant's tomb. They lived for nothing and died for less."

  "Aiva? Our host suggests that wolves cannot fly."

Ragnar waits patiently, silently, until it appears Shovash has gotten whatever she wanted out of this encounter. The hint of the Whispering Tyrant rising from its slumber was something to be investigated with all haste - another threat simultaneous with the Primordials could not be ignored. But if Tar-Baphon was indeed returning, best to deprive him of a powerful lieutenant in advance. And if he wasn't...the same.

Aiming carefully, he looses a single bolt at the winter-wight. Shovash had noted the area was not warded against teleportation; to Ragnar, that spoke of an intended escape route if under attack. But not anymore.

(Surprise round attack, hits AC56 for 77 damage, Phase Lock, and a DC39 Dispel.)

The winterwight just laughs at Shovash's comment. "Oh, that's rich. That's rich, indeed. Well played, madame. I commend you. Shall we dance, then?" It stands, and is nearly knocked back into its throne by the first bolt from Ragnar. It doesn't stop chuckling the entire time. It does stop a moment later, when Aiva launches into motion and brings Amaranthine down hard on its chest, carving away a chunk of ice.

"I have but one question. Who were you, before you became what you are?"

Ragnar's voice echoes in the confines of the room, with the odd reverb caused by his curse-borne impermanence, but he does not wait for an answer. A full flurry of bolts follows his first, hammering into the crater caused by Aiva's blade one after another  before he shifts sideways a short distance.

(Free Boots of Speed, full attack, Swift for Fleet Charge. Total of 460 damage before DR.)

  Shovash takes her time rising to her feet, though it's still well before the battered weight has a chance to. She takes her time stretching her hands and settling her grip on that staff, too, before she finally looks up at their undead host. "እንተ ነኝ," she explains, as though to a dim child. But before she can even complete the spell, there is no host to cast it on. The last of the major undead in this place is gone.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:44, Wed 01 Apr 2020.

Ragnar lands bolt after bolt, and though the wight manages to snatch one of the bolts out of the air with incredible reflexes, the others prove more than sufficient. The winterwight is pinned to the throne, twisting for a moment, before it falls into dust and frost.

Arkr looks at the scene, then looks at Shovash, his features stunned. He kneels after a moment, head bowed, and in Orc he murmurs a question, soft as a whisper, reverent.

"Be my god?"

  "Hmph. I expected a campaign, not an afternoon's idle time. For the reputation this place has, it—hm? Arkr, what is..." It takes a second for his question to sink in. And it turns out that, for all her eagerness to step into that role exactly, Shovash hadn't been expecting worship to come so soon. The surprise manages to even break through the wall of confidence she projects so often, and she shoots Aiva and Ragnar a very clear 'Is this really happening?' looks even as she approaches the warrior.

  "You... What, in defiance of the Midnight Lord himself? Hmm. I knew you would be loyal, but— I am... very pleased. That you take this step yourself. Yes. Yes, I will accept your worship." She crouches in front of him, then, and sweeps her wings forward to enfold them both. Her next words are not as quiet as his last, but soft enough they are clearly not for the sake of their audience. "And I will accept the responsibility along with it. Let them come after me for your soul. I bound them once already."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:42, Thu 02 Apr 2020.

Arkr accepts Shovash's embrace, head bowed still. "Thank you, Lady," he whispers. "My axe is yours, my life is yours. So be it."

Flickering back into visibility, Ragnar takes a minute to inspect what remains of the winterwight, ensuring it is truly destroyed and not lurking behind some illusory trick or another. Once he is satisfied, he turns to where Shovash waits with Arkr.

"This has been an entertaining afternoon, to be certain, but if you intend to continue further I will have to take my leave of the group for now. An unexpected matter has arisen that I must attend to, entirely separate from the need to investigate the monstrosity's claims with regards to the Tyrant. Perhaps I will rejoin you later, depending on how long I am occupied - and if not, I will see you again when next we slay a titan."

Returning to the massive staircase, he flies straight upward back to the surface, pausing only long enough to reorient himself before heading towards the nearest large city. Teleporting to Bhati's remains will be much easier than flying the whole way, after all.

Shovash goes up, and takes a day to prepare for the next wave. The new leadership of the tribe seems to be working out quite well, but there are still many things to hash out, details of the distribution of labor and plotting their next steps as a tribe. The next morning, she receives a sending from Tolben, saying that the next attack will take place in Quantium, that a gas gianter is also in orbit over Quantium, and asking her to take care in the Cenotaph and bring back spellbooks.

The same morning, Arkr stands beside her as the armor of the graveknight is reassembled. He is quiet, one hand on his axe handle, distrust of the armor written in his posture.

  The previous day had been an exercise in compressing excitement until it looked like quiet confidence. No two ways about it: the Mutilated Corpse was a prize, and it had come with their shaman's support. That had been especially hard to win anywhere since the business with the gods. But today, with this captured queen, she could be more open about such things. She was humming.

  "I know you're troubled," she interrupted herself to comment. She had checked the number and arrangement of pieces several minutes ago and had just been adjusting their arrangement since. At the moment, she had the greaves held in the gauntlets, high to the sides. It looked obscene.

  "I don't think less of you for it. She was powerful and treacherous. It would be foolish not to be careful, if she might revive." Shovash adjusted the thigh plates a bit until it looked unmistakably like the armor was pulling its legs wide to be fucked. And there she stopped, apparently satisfied.

  "Prepare for a short drop," she said almost flippantly, making a fist near the ground as though she were grasping something. When she stood and pulled up, darkness rose around them on all sides until the sunlight filtered in only dimly from a circle overhead. And then the circle closed, and they were in a cave of moss and stone and a scent like childhood memories. Shovash took a second to breathe deeply, satisfaction evident, then focused her attention on the armor again. The bare rock of the cave floor liquefied, it seemed, and flowed around the sinking adamantium until the armor was half-buried inside a flat oval of basalt. And then that oval slid, through 'natural' structures that reformed behind it, until it had risen nearly ten feet up the wall of the chamber they were in. It even shifted the positions of the pieces as it went until the mocking pose was perfect, and all at slight gestures and simple directions from Arkr's host. Her grin when the display settled into place was enormous. "I think she'll make a wonderful trophy. Don't you?"

"Yes, Lady. Though...did you not mean to summon the wight into her body? I am surprised that you turn instead to this." Arkr bows his head, continuing. "Whatever you choose to do with her, though, I agree that it was a fine conquest. Another triumph. The Cenotaph rings with the silence of the grave, now." An unusually poetic turn of phrase for the orc warrior, but then, the moment does seem to demand it.

  "Yes, you are exactly right. She will most likely be a temporary trophy, and that is a pity." Her flicking tail catches a small stone and sends it clattering to the side. It rolls up the wall as readily as it might have along the floor. She had wanted to keep Arkr precisely because he doubted her at first, yes, but now he was dimming her moment. Shovash exhales sharply through her nose and sets her hands on her hips, but continues to eye the display she had set.

  "But don't tie yourself to what I tell outsiders to expect. Ingrid was as much a traitor as Uran was. I would have spared her life simply because the warning was useful, but she was getting a zombie child, if her story hadn't been confirmed by the relic on the throne. And even now, she'll make do with something... lesser than this, until I am certain she can be trusted with the power."

  "Besides, I don't actually know whether the Stalker's salvo left the magic intact. If Uran doesn't revive, I can't expect Ingrid to. I'm testing." A sound like footsteps comes from above them. The chamber has a high ceiling, and several tunnels open onto it near the top as well. Shovash looks up with a smile. "Now, that should be a patrol come to check out the sound of arrivals. A little slower than they should be, but there are many right now still learning the tunnels."

  "Much like you will have to," she finishes, raising her hands to fuss with the setting of one ring. "Somewhere in these caves is an open portal to my throne room at Wyvernsting. I will await you there. My family here will watch you, but they won't harm an orc who doesn't attack them first, no matter how they might haze you. Don't tarry, pilgrim." And then she makes a noise with her mouth that doesn't sound like language at all, and she is gone.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:48, Fri 10 Apr 2020.

"Yes, Lady. My apologies, Lady." It's clear that Arkr has noticed Shovash's displeasure, and he is quick to repent, bowing his head and extending his hands out to the side in a posture of clear acceptance. "I will find you there, as you command, so be it."

  Less than a minute later—not that anyone in either location would know—Shovash emerges from the rippling shadows that obscure an archway on a side wall of her throne room. Clearly magical, the portal remains black and opaque as tar despite the bonfire blazing at its base. A clawed hand reaches out of the flames as she walks through them but retreats when she swats it aside with her tail.

  Despite the chill of latitude and elevation, the fire keeps the room warm enough that the pair of guards dressed only in loincloths have nothing to endure but boredom. The knucklebones are helping, when she arrives. Shovash herself is draped in a hide that might be lion, might be manticore, and definitely wasn't cut for modesty. She's a classic green, now, and it makes her wings look almost draconic.

  "Αφήστε τον γιο μου να αναδυθεί," she instructs the flames as she steps out of them, and they peel back to the sides of the portal like open curtains.  She nods in acknowledgement of the guards, and they greet her by name after standing from their game.

  "The Cenotaph stands empty, its army dust," she comments off-hand, as though the announcement is of secondary importance at most. "Doloch, tell Argiut I'm here and want her to come at once. Lox, tell me what I've missed."

"Yes, Mistress," Doloch says, sprinting off for the seneschal.

Lox, meanwhile, clears his throat and reports. "Queen, we have endured two attacks by disorganized rabble since you departed, both of them repelled easily. A rakshasa maharajah sent an offer of trade - he offers fine fruits, grain, cloth, and assorted manufactured goods, transported by teleportation, in trade for coin or kind. There was a fire on the southern edge of Wyvernsting, of unknown cause, which killed a family and destroyed a home before being put out." Finished, he bows his head and takes a step back.

Argiut arrives a moment later, hurrying in. "You sent for me, O Lady of Shadowed Places?" she says.

  "Yes, I did. Put together a list of any supplies we aren't already stocked up on that come from the undead." She grins, and the lopsided tusks make it resemble a sneer. From the jaws lying on her shoulder, she withdraws a rotting hand with grossly elongated phalanges that erupt through the flesh as savage claws. The smell actually makes her gag before she offers it, wrist first, to the younger brewer. "Festers of ghoul fever, for instance. Careful you don't cut yourself, and take the time to ready your unguents before you try to extract it."

  Still brushing the traces of filth off her fingers, Shovash turns briefly back to the guards and tilts her head toward the portal. "A newcomer will be arriving as soon as the whelps get bored of playing with him. He will be a bit overwhelmed, I think. Quarter him in the castle, for now, if he arrives while I'm away." It's Argiut who gets the immediate explanation of that, though.

  "I'm heading west. I've been meaning to make peace with the Endseers for over a year, and I've just come across a second reason to break the Dead Eye. I'll return before nightfall. Oh! Also, send a message to Molog to ready his fastest wing. The whole wing. I need some kidnapping done, and the survivors will be rewarded well."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:58, Thu 16 Apr 2020.

"I'll let him know," Argiut says, relaxing as it becomes clear that Shovash is in a good mood. She takes the undead extremity, gingerly, and takes it off to her laboratory before going to inform Molog.

Quick. Efficient. That's Argiut's style, and why Shovash promoted her in the first place.

  Five syllables later, Shovash disappears without a sign, just there and then not. She arrives just as abruptly at the Brimstone Haruspex, submerged above her knees at the edge of the caldera's largest pool. She has her sandals in one hand to keep them from burning; the hide around her hips stops high enough already. She doesn't stick around long and isn't welcome in the first place: the Endseers prayed to the Devourer, after all, back when that would help. But it would have been this or send an envoy, and even trying to repair relationships, it's good policy to remind people of their powerlessness to stop you.

  She takes off once it's clear they've noticed her—the rays of fire warming her swollen belly are a good indication—and rides the updraft to just below the cloud cover.  There, with the broadest perspective she can arrange, Shovash breaks out of her slow circles to look for one of the Dead Eye tribe's deliberately primitive camps.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:48, Sun 19 Apr 2020.

The Dead Eye tribe is not hard to find. Their settlement, built around a few cave entrances in a particularly desolate and barren-looking area, is crudely made and simplistic. Shovash swoops down upon them, and finds her reception...less than ideal. By which it is meant that multiple thrown spears are her greeting, though none of them are remotely sufficient to threaten her.

She lands, and delivers her ultimatum in a voice that the entire settlement can hear: they could renounce their contempt of their fellow orcs and their belief in their unique god, or they could go to meet him.

This is met with shock that quickly turns to anger. The shaman of the tribe is the first to step forward, shouting the beginning of a spell. Shovash snuffs him out as easily as a candle.

This process is repeated time and time again. Dead Eye warriors throw themselves against her. It's not fighting - that word is far too generous. It's a simple slaughter. As they attack her, she ends them, in droves.

But finally, with perhaps half the settlement dead by her hand, someone steps forward with a very different posture - hesitant, almost shy. He's an orc of slight build, young, clearly not an experienced warrior at all. And he says, his tone reinforcing that impression of shyness, "I was born in this tribe. I will not die for it. Their god is either a lie or a powerless fool, and I am not his servant."

Several of the Dead Eye look shocked. A couple look ready to execute this coward on the spot. But others, perhaps emboldened by his words, speak their own renunciations. Some are clearly insincere, others appear to be honestly held beliefs - but slightly under half the settlement ends up making the affirmation, speaking the words with ravens and vultures circling overhead.

  The shaman isn't even the prize: Shovash had expected a few of those to break themselves on her, and this one doesn't disappoint, calling down the wrath of heaven as though it were something for her to fear.  She actually lets the lightning sizzle harmlessly over her skin and into the ground before she disintegrates the would-be defender of the faith.  Her wings are enough to deflect the large majority of the incoming spears, and none of the rest manage to do more than scratch her iron skin.  It would honestly be disappointing, if she had expected real resistance.

  What she expected instead is exactly what emerges: a parade of fools opting for summary execution rather than swallow their pride and admit 'mighty Brumash' could not save them.  She hadn't even bound this god, but still he utterly fails to raise a champion who could threaten her.  And this was supposed to be the 'father of the orc gods'?  Shovash rolls her eyes and bats aside an axe.  If the Dead Eye tribe were capable of enough coordination to challenge her, she wouldn't have nearly so much reason to confront them in the first place.  It's almost sad, watching them die for an already-bankrupt tradition.  Letting Sting rampage through a few of them keeps it a little entertaining, at least.  But then, eventually, the most foolhardy and unmanageable—the ones who later would have most resisted her full takeover—are gone.  When it takes more than a handful of seconds for another aimless savage to rush her, she begins mentally preparing to leave.  She'd give them a year to replace a fraction of their dead, and then—

  And then one of them approaches as a penitent.  One of them actually recants, in the sight of his entire tribe.  She can smell the fear on him, but he gets the words out.

  "Come here, boy."  Shovash waves him close as more of the survivors echo him.  Scores of more powerful warriors charged up to confront her, and the only ones who even came close were the ones she chose to cut down in melee to entertain herself—their blood covers her head-to-toe and paints the rocks around her in a wide radius.  And he walks unharmed through the gore to come closer than any of them had reached.  She raises three fingers to his chest and begins to paint a broad spiral, the magic in her gloves pulling the blood on her body toward them, keeping the brush wet.  Soon, he bears the same mark that decorates her tribal banner.  "First Eagle, bravest of your people, you will come with me.  When you return to them, it will be as a hero, a teacher.  I want this demonstration to be the last of its kind.  Come."

  She gives him some time to actually decide to obey, as his elders lay down their weapons all around.  And then, still touching his chest, she speaks a word.  They are both gone before the last syllable.