Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

She still lived.

She felt exultant. She had known delight many times before. The day she had regained her youth. When she killed the demon lords Kothophed and Griselbrand, hearing their death screams. Each of those moments had felt like cheating; the best kind of cheating, where you get away with it and still win at the end.

( But this moment was even sweeter )

A noise from her bed drew her attention away from the window. There was Ignis, not a bat, but something Chandra had called a 'foxicorn.' Which was accurate enough she supposed. He was standing on her bed, making cranky noises at her. Liliana wasn't sure if he was upset about how long she'd been standing, or if he had sensed the direction of her thoughts and didn't approve.

Well, one of those was easily remedied, and putting in terms of 'calming Ignis' tendency to fuss' was much more palatable than acknowledging that she was still too weak to stand unaided for long. She crossed her chamber and climbed back into bed; Ignis immediately scampered to her and laid down, cuddling by her side with his head resting on her chest. She began scritching behind his floppy ears. "Perhaps it's time I did some rethinking on Jace's offer, hmm?" she asked. "Perhaps my eyes have been opened to the power of friendship after all."

[NFB. Mostly establishy but open for calls or texts, much of the text taken from "The Promised End" by Ken Troop]

Liliana had thought the storm would be the worst thing they would run into in their flight from her invaded home, but she had been wrong. The storm had eventually subsided, but the countryside of Stensia had become a twisted zoo. Liliana noted that every passerby had something reshaped about them. The bodies of roving vampires had the wrong silhouettes, always with too few of something, or too many. Anatomically improbable travelers raved prophecies of stone and sea at them as they staggered in diagonals.

Their trek had been long, lasting deep into the night - the werewolves had torn through her horses and zombies both, leaving them to walk. But now, finally, Liliana, Gared, and (haltingly) Dierk, had arrived at the monumental door.

Lurenbraum Fortress soared above them, a stark cliff with a citadel that protruded directly from the rock face. Higher up, the utilitarian architecture softened and elongated into tiers of ornate leaded windows, each one with its own floating chandelier of twinkling candles. In many of the windows, vampires peered down at them, wearing gleaming ancestral armor.

Liliana gestured for Gared to knock.

Gared gawked at the door's height. "You really know the lady of the house?" he asked.

Dierk, for his part, made a gurgling noise. The man's neck was broken, so his head rested at a weird angle and his throat looked lumpy. But at least his legs had gotten him here, and at least his arms had been capable of carrying the spent witchbane orb. Gared's long coat was strapped tight around Dierk's midsection, doing its best to hold the remainder of the dead man's insides in. Liliana raised her hand slightly, and Dierk squared his shoulders, but his head still dangled to one side. The desiccated tongue wouldn't stay completely inside his mouth, contributing to the gurgle. Liliana shrugged.

"I make it my business to know those who wield power," Liliana said. "As does she."

( Gared banged on the door and stood back. )

[Taken and only minimally adapted from "Innistrad's Last Hope" by Doug Beyer. Follows this. NFB, NFI, OOC is wonderful!]

Jace had left, marching out into the storm. He hadn't gotten out of the gates before he'd turned back around, meek and apologetic, to be let into the manor once more and put to bed. This morning, he, still wild-eyed, and Ignis, still annoyed but determined, had left for the High City of Thraben.

She hadn't wanted Ignis to go back out in this weather, or to accompany a mad telepath to confront an insane angel, but she couldn't deny that his absence from Vess Manor was useful. Today, they were undertaking the riskiest experiment yet; the overlap of the storm and his absence too useful to ignore.

Liliana could almost see her reflection in the spectral-glass vessels where the wires led, and in the latticework of the witchbane orb on the windowsill, and in the conductive tubes that led out the window and up onto the roof. The etchings in her face were just visible through the Veil, once more covering her face. The lines in her skin matched the menacing light of the storm clouds outside. Lightning flickered appropriately.

Two demons still needed to die. But she had to make sure she wouldn't die herself when she managed to face them. The Chain Veil was a potent weapon, but potentially deadly to its wielder. If this worked, she could use the Veil safely. She could keep the artifact's power where it belonged - in her hands - without having to deal with the agenda of the millions of souls that made the Veil their final resting place.

And she could rid the Multiverse of her demonic creditors once and for all.

"Are we ready?" Liliana asked.

( What could possibly go wrong? )

***
( And elsewhere in Innistrad... )

Just as soon as Sorin's pet angel, Avacyn, was dead.

[Liliana's section adapted from "Innistrad's Last Hope" by Doug Beyer, while Nahiri's is spliced, diced, and stitched back together from "Stone and Blood" by Kelly Digges and "Emrakul Rises" by Kimberly J. Kreines. Previous post here; next post here. NFB, NFI, OOC is wonderful, as are Liliana's choices when left alone. Warning for (as always) for length.]

While Ignis and Jace followed the trail of odd stone outcroppings, people all over Innistrad were dealing with the madness infecting the plane - and sometimes giving into it themselves.



It was time. Time to pray.

Dear Archangel Avacyn. Mother told me that if I get scared, I should pray. I'm scared now.

( Maeli cowered, alone )

[Adapted with some minor, if important, edits from "Emrakul Rises" by Kimberly J. Kreines. NFB, NFI, Maeli's saga starts here, continues here, and ends...here.]

Stensia, Morning
Since leaving Markov Manor, Jace had been consumed by the journal: what it said, what questions it asked, what answers it gave. Both men had agreed that clearly something greater was at work here - after all, they'd found the journal in Markov Manor, which had been destroyed by some as yet unknown force, and the journal discussed many of the weird issues plaguing Innistrad currently: the madness of angels, the monstrousness of werewolves, the twisting transformation of villagers...and sometimes their villages as well. It seemed like each step across Innistrad they took, they found evidence of some new fresh horror at work, and they'd barely been at this for a full twenty-four hours.

Fortunately for them both, he'd been released from the tense delusions of Markov Manor; his composure and thoughts had cleared. He was fully back in the land of the sane once more.

Jace knew that Ignis was impatiently waiting for him to pack up the journal so they could continue their trek, but he couldn't help but linger over their breakfast at the inn they'd overnighted in. But how could he go on, when there were so many fascinating noted to uncover within? Intricate field drawings filled the pages in front of him. An angel's wing—each feather described in painstakingly detailed line work. A gridded table of field drawings of delicately shaded circles under the boxed heading "Material Composition of the Heron Moon." A full-page image of a part-man, part-wolf, depicted in profile. This journal was as much art as it was scholarship.

( Entry 433, Harvest Moon )

Okay, maybe that was enough reading for the morning. With a hard swallow of the last of his coffea, Jace tucked the journal into his belt and went to see if Ignis was getting anywhere in negotiations to rent some kind of conveyance.

***
Stensia, Afternoon
Their horses didn't like the marshes. At first, Jace thought it was just that they didn't like the dampness, the uneven footing, the chill mist that seemed to find every gap in clothing. But as they continued, it became obvious that it wasn't the marsh specifically that they were leery of, but something within it. Finally, right after noon, the mists thinned a bit and they found themselves looking at a twisting monolith. It was approximately his height, the foundation formed from raw stone pulled from the earth that quickly turned to a hard-edged, twisting shape. Staring down the axis of its tip, Jace noted that the formation pointed to another just like it a couple hundred meters away. It in turn pointed to another, and another, until they disappeared from view in the distance. Looking closely, Jace saw that the very trees themselves had begun growing in the direction of the monoliths.

"Ignis! Ignis, look at that! This monolith is unmistakably the same as those we saw at Markov Manor, and I'm certain I saw the exact same image here the journal!" He missed Ignis' reply, barely even noticing the tone it was delivered in (a scathing drawl), because he was quickly diving back into the text. "And you, our paper companion, what did you know about this?" He eagerly thumbed through the pages to the image of the same twisted stones that he remembered glancing over the night before, when he was still puzzling over the Kamigawan script. An entry followed:

( Entry 643, Hunter's Moon )

The moor was silent, save for a rising buzz of swamp insects and the restive movement of their horses. Ignis was asking him something or other, tone a bit concerned now, but Jace didn't answer. He had more reading to do.

***
Kessig, Evening
They had followed the stones - cryptoliths, the journal had called them, all the way from Stensia to the border of Gavony, but then had turned and ridden south towards Kessig to see if the lines of stones could be found there, too.

Indeed they were, all uniform in height and size, equidistant apart.

As our colleagues in Kessig had seen the renewed savagery of lycanthropes, here in Nephalia we too have recorded signs of the moon's unease (see Table 6-32). The oceans themselves have risen to record high tides in addition to a change in their direction—

Jace pored over the charts on the previous page's ledger with a critical editorial eye that would have made Lavinia proud, had she seen him do so more than a handful of times as the Guildpact.

—despite experiments performed in triplicate, far exceeding tolerances for measurement error. The gravitational force governing the movement of the tides appears to have shifted from the moon itself to a location very close to the sea—

"Wait a second. Hang on," Jace said indignantly to the handwritten pages. "I've seen Kiora move the entire Halimar Sea. Or at least try to. And...and even if it was something that could move the tides, it would have to be huge. There's no way such a thing could have gone unnoticed!" He gave the book a cautionary glare, as if warning it to not turn tricky on him.

Each of my studies seems to blossom into more inquiries. For every answer, three questions...

More questions, endless questions.

More clues, still with no answers. Jace clenched and unclenched his fists, filled with nervous energy. The evidence was infuriating - nothing to hear, grasp, or know on his own. Even his own eyes seemed useless. He had no choice but to let the journal lead him along.

"Why aren't you here, in person? I have so many questions..." Jace gave a longing sigh toward the journal. Silence. "Of course. Wishful thinking."

The text of the pages stared back at him, defying him to reread their final words. "I know, I know. We've found a trail in the stones, I'll—-er, we'll follow it." He gave a guilty glance to Ignis; he had spent more of the day talking to the journal than he had his flesh-and-blood companion. "I just...I wish I knew better what we were looking for? Trail or trap, what have you left me here?"

Either way, they'd find it in Nephalia.

[Once more into the breach, dear friends! This post spliced, diced, and julienned from "The Drownyard Temple" by Mel Li. Ignis modded with permission from the wonderfully game and always enthusiastic chef_chocobro. Warning for length, because of course there is, I'm adapting very long "short" fictions, okay? NFI, NFB, OOC is cherished. Follows the events of this post. Also, warning for gore/body horror under the Entry 433, Harvest Moon cut!]

Things were worsening on Innistrad. Angels had gone mad and begun killing people, including children. Cults of all stripes had spung up like fat toadstools after rain, maddened werewolves and crazed vampires stalked the countryside, bodies twisting and mutating. And at the center of it all was one woman's burning desire for vengeance.

But it wouldn't be a proper accounting of the travails of Innistrad without mention of two endlessly squabbling siblings.

( The Necrotrash Saga Continues )

[Taken and minimally mangled from Alison Luhrs "Games." NFI, NFB, OOC is love. Part one is here. It's all coming to a head...soon.]

Thalia was the Guardian of Thraben, yes, but it was the surrounding countryside that needed her help the most. And so, against the will and wishes of the Lunarch Council, she and a handpicked group of Cathars were riding around Gavony, attempting to fight back this wave of twisted evil. The Lunarch Council might have forgotten that Avacyn's faithful - if anybody could be called that anymore, as the human casualties from Avacyn's murderous rampage continued to grow - weren't limited to those within the bounds of the Bright City, but Thalia certainly hadn't. And she had found enough similarly-minded cathars who believed in that strongly enough to risk life, limb, and their standing within the Church to accompany her when she'd ridden out of the rebuilt gates to begin her patrols.

At first, they had fought against vampires and werewolves and - worse yet - maddened angels, but as their time outside of Thraben's walls continued, their steel and moon-blessed silver was more frequently turned to fighting corrupted nightmare creatures that defied sanity and sense and yet existed anyway. Their numbers had swelled over the last few weeks, going from the occasional monstrosity terrorizing travelers to a flood of them, trying to tear their way into homes and eventually, even towns.

And now they were numerous enough to threaten whole cities.

( Here there be violence and body horror )

[Heavily edited and adapted (and twisted and changed) from "Saint Traft and the Flight of Nightmares" by James Wyatt. NFI, NFB. Warning: death of an NPC]

"Maeli! Maeli!" Kalsa's voice echoed through the growing dusk. Where is that child? Kalsa peered under porches and looked through bushes. He hasn't run away again, she told herself, hoping if she said it confidently enough it would be true. Kalsa tried hard not to think of a few months ago, when he had run off. When Avacyn had appeared to save her child.

It had been a miracle, a true miracle, though there was one thing that marred that precious memory: how mad she had been at Maeli. Of course she had been worried about him, frantic about him. Her panic at losing him had fueled her prayer to Avacyn, a prayer so powerful Avacyn had responded. When Avacyn had brought him back to her arms, all she had felt was relief, an overpowering joy that left her in happy tears.

( Until the change came over her. )
Avacyn watched as the remains of the mortal creature blew away, the ashes scattering and swirling for a moment of flight before falling to the ground. Chaos into order. Corruption into purity. Peace increases.

The sky whispered to her. The rivers, the trees, the grass, the moon. All whispered glorious truth.

For so long I have listened to the whispers of liars, and the world has suffered. Now she was listening to truth. She knew it was truth because every whisper said the same thing, so unlike the chaotic, conflicting prayers she had heard for hundreds of years. Why did I not realize how inconsistent these mortal creatures are? Their words always change. No matter, now. Now she understood.

She looked at the moon, and the moon whispered such beautiful words. All will burn. All will bleed. Avacyn repeated the words to herself, a soothing song filling her head with joy. All will burn. All will bleed. She laughed and smiled as her angels continued the great work in the burning village.

[Taken from "A Gaze Blank And Pitiless" by Ken Troop. Warning for onscreen NPC death NFI, NFB. Folks in Innistrad are definitely having a normal one. Kalsa and Maeli's first interaction with Avacyn is here.]

(Letter from Elsi Rimheit, daughter of Elder Adila Rimheit, 98th of Harvest Moon, Ava. 717)

Dear Mama,

I miss you! Grandfather says we will go to Thraben soon, but I'd rather you just come home. We went picking blackberries yesterday. Remember last year when I filled two buckets? This year I filled three! Grandfather says you would have been proud of me.

There were wolves outside last night. I could hear them snuffling on the other side of my wall. I was so scared without you. Grandmother tucked me in, but she doesn't make the blankets the way you do.

Please come home soon!

Love,

Elsi

( Image Heavy Post )

[Taken from "The Cursed Blade," written by Ryan Miller, Jenna Helland, Matt Tabak, Bruce Cordell, Josh Brauer. Content Warning: (Offscreen) Death of a Child. NFI, NFB]

For once, Liliana hadn't made too much of a fuss getting up early. Today was the Midsummer Music Festival at her alma mater, Strixhaven University, and as a thank you to Prompto for finishing the job of teaching her to drive, she had invited him to go see it. Which, of course, had turned into an invitation to his family, and there was no way that Ignis wasn't going to come along, and also no way that Prompto would stand for leaving anyone out, and so it was a merry party of seven that stepped through the portal. Liliana had asked folks to wear nothing too Earth modern and explained that very few people, if anybody, they would meet knew about other planes (many, many, many Quandrix theories aside) and to please keep it that way. Once any questions were out of the way, they stepped through a portal...

...And onto into a large walkway made from gleaming white stone. A short staircase led up to a park, full of greenery, fountains, and comfortable benches. In the center of the park was an imposing statue of a magic user made of white marble and curving over its head was a arc of huge stones, the largest easily hundreds of feet long, hanging in the air in a perfect arch. Above them shone two suns, beaming brightly down, though the heat was not particularly oppressive. The area was crowded with people, though there was still enough room for people to walk without being pressed against anyone else. "Welcome to the Archway Commons," Liliana said, possibly grinning more broadly than any of them had ever experienced, save Ignis. "So named because of the star arch above there - the second largest star arch on campus. The largest is the Dawnbow, over the Bibloplex. Star arches get their name from their irregular spokes evoke the radiating lines of a shining celestial star. They're found all over Arcavios, made from spokes of natural materials that float in an arch shape, with a precise inner curve and a rough and irregular outer arch. They can stand straight or lie at an angle; they can be small or enormous, whole or broken, grown over or mysteriously clean. Their origins are a mystery lost to the Dawning Age, though many people have said that they've seen an arch appear to them at a critical juncture in their lives, helping them understand a lesson or answer a burning question in their mind." She laughed. "It's important to note that I've never had a star arch manifest in front of me, so I can't say for certain how accurate that is, but there are plenty of theories about them."

Arm laced through Ignis', she led them forward through the central campus, pointing out various landmarks, though there were a few that she clearly didn't recognize, like the Strixhaven Stadium where it seemed like some kind of game was underway, the stands maybe half full of cheering people. The large crowds continued as they went along, an excitement in the air.

"I see the popularity of the Midsummer Music Festival has grown since I was a student here," Liliana said with an almost apologetic smile. Almost. Liliana Vess didn't apologize. "It was large even then but not like this!" Strange what a difference almost two hundred years could make. "Anyway, I brought us early enough that we'd have enough time for quick tours around the other college campuses if you'd like? We can also go right to Prismari, there's plenty to explore there and we can get set up."

[For thems what are here! NFB for awayness.]