Liliana Vess Defiant Necromancer

After leaving the cathedral, Jace had Planeswalked away, babbling about the Gatewatch, the group he'd formed with three other Planeswalkers while defeating two Eldrazi Titans on a plane named Zendikar. He promised to return by morning and with the six of them together, they stood a chance of defeating Emrakul. It would have been better with seven, but Sorin had vanished. The vampire had made clear he had other priorities and they would receive no help from that quarter. Sigarda also departed; she had promised her assistance to Thalia, protecting the innocent from the madness overtaking all of Innistrad.

But nowhere was it worse than right here in Thraben. The misshapen werewolves and other creatures that had been rampaging through the countryside had been caused by the barest touch of Emrakul's influence on the plane, what little had been able to permeate past the barrier that had been Avacyn. Now that the great Titan was here, her full corrupting effect had been unleashed onto the populace and the High City had transformed into a nightmare. Tamiyo and Ignis had caught a few hours sleep in the cellar of the cathedral, exhausted by the battle against the maddened angel and her twisted abomination of a sister. But as they made their way to the outskirts of the city to the planned meeting point, they learned the extent of the horrific changes the Titan of Corruption had wrought as she'd made her way from Nephalia to Gavony, slow but relentless.

( Initial Plans )

***
"Look at it, Gared. Pretty, in a way. Your world is ending." Liliana watched as Thraben burned and tentacles reached down from the storms to rake the earth below. The sky swarmed with angels, and the ground beneath the titan just swarmed. From this distance, she could make out only the movement, an unending, writhing mass of creatures, pressing as close to the source of the world's end as they could.

"Yes, mistress. S'what it does around here, mostly." The geistmage's apprentice, with his bulging eye, looked forlornly down at the chaos.

"Ah, there they are. See the fire and the flashes of light? Jace must have gone to fetch his little friends. Looks like they're headed straight toward the center of it all." Because of course they were. And she had no doubt Ignis was right there with them.

Gared tilted his head, an interesting effect atop his already asymmetrical body. "Yes, mistress. I couldn't help but notice, you've raised this lovely little army to help, but we're staying up here, and the others are down there."

There was nothing little about her army. Undead spread out behind her nearly to the horizon. "Hmm. I suppose that's true. Well then, shall we go make an entrance?"

***
( Rarely Survive Contact With The Enemy )

[Mulched, composted, and grown from "Battle of Thraben" by Nik Davidson. Finally, Liliana gets to march an army of zombies on Thraben. Enrichment for necromancers. Played with the peerless chef_chocobo. NFI, NFB, follows this.]

Liliana stumbled as they stepped through the portal and onto Shandalar. Lush trees encircled them, soft loam cradled their feet, the pungent smell of rotting humus sank deep into their noses. The air was sweltering and sticky, though Liliana took no more notice of that than she did in Baltimore. Perhaps there was sound—the call of birds startled by her arrival, the tromp of a baloth in the distance - but as soon as she stepped through, all of her senses were bound up by the cacophony of the Veil.

"...nurtured the root...strong enough...the vessel..."

Different voices rose and fell over each other in a constant susurrus that gnawed at the edges of her mind. Usually, it was worst right after she used magic; the rest of the time she could ignore them or drown them out with her own thoughts. But with her first step onto Shandalar, the rules had apparently changed. If she'd known it was going to be like this, she might not have been so impatient during the two month delay on their portal.

"Pipe down, boys," she said aloud, leaning against a tree to steady herself and barely aware she was speaking aloud.

"...hallowed earth...the void's first breath..."

"I said shut up!"

Silence. The voices stopped. If birds had been calling, they quieted at the sound of her outburst.

"Don't talk to me about the void," she snapped. "Now where in this cursed world am I?"

( Root. Vessel. Veil. )

[Adapted, torn apart, and stitched together from The Veil of Deceit, written by James Wyatt and preplayed with the amazingly talented chef_chocobro. Followed by this.]

Liliana was getting quite tired of things whispering in her head, thank you. As if the Chain Veil weren't more than enough, now there was something else murmuring at her. She could hear whatever it was, like an insistent scratching from worlds away. Some kind of hidden force, drawing her in, dangling secrets before her like bait. A dark power calling out. She'd had many experiences with those - and, you know, most of them had been bad.

But still. She couldn't just ignore it. A dark power? Secrets? It was possible that this was somehow linked to the Chain Veil. The voice she was hearing felt like it was ancient, and she knew the Chain Veil had been created thousands of years ago.

Liliana...

"Shut up," Liliana muttered, which made the Onakke spirits whisper, *Vessel of destruction...* in her head. "Oh come off it, you don't have a monopoly over being told to shut up," she snapped at them. "That being said, do shut up."

She was also getting tired of telling things to shut up while she was supposed to be relaxing in her bathtub.

Something needed to be done about this. And while she wasn't yet ready to handle the Chain Veil, tracking down this hidden power was certainly within her capabilities.

Liliana...

Liliana glared at the smoldering wreckage in front of her like it was a personal insult, reminding herself that even though the contractors were starting this week, she couldn't just slag the offending ruins - and the rest of the kitchen along with it - the way she wanted to. The contractors had enough on their hands with the rest of the house and she was pretty sure she couldn't hide a corrupted and rotted kitchen from Ignis for long.

Even though it was tempting. Really, really, really tempting.

...harvest of rotting fruit...the vessel of evil...

"Yes, yes, I've heard it all before and I remain unimpressed," she snapped at the Onakke voices, giving the Chain Veil at her hip a brusque shake for good measure. "Now shut up and let me think."

Perhaps aware of her mood, the Onakke spirits wisely stopped their murmuring.

The wreckage was still hot, though the cake pan had dulled from a cherry red to a more blackened color, though the smoke remained thick in the air. Taking a pair of the...oven glove thingies...she picked up the whole mess from the oven rack and threw it into the sink to finish cooling, summoning her steward with a single cranky thought.

"When that cools enough to not start any fires, throw the whole thing away," she ordered. The pan had warped enough that even if her steward could scrub all the soot and char off, it would be useless. "Clean up this mess--" she gestured to the rest of the kitchen, where it looked like a small bakery had exploded "--make sure whatever ingredients I used up are replaced, and do not allow Ignis in this kitchen until it stops smelling like a backed up chimney in here."

"Of course, Mistress."

Liliana grabbed a now-thoroughly stained piece of paper and stalked out of her good-for-nothing kitchen. It looked like it was time to put these so-called 'benefits of friendship' to work. Pulling her phone out, she scrolled down to a number and pressed the call button.

"Hello Nell, dear," she said into the receiver. "Might I come by your apartment and borrow your kitchen and your baking expertise?"

[For one, please, and NFB if the squirrels know what's good for them.]

The courtyard Liliana and her undead escort walked out into was beautiful. It resembled an ornate garden with stands of fruit trees and gold-and-white flowers clearly cultivated with painstaking care. Directly in front of them was the Tree of Redemption, an ancient, sprawling tree with crimson leaves. It was beautiful and welcoming - at least until one looked closely enough to see the nooses that dangled from the branches.

"This is where you'll end up with Avacyn's grace," the corpse of Kelse said from where she was flanking Liliana's left.

"Well, she should really get right on that," Liliana said, striding forward under the tree. As she passed under the boughs, the nooses burned with black fire and fell to ashes to the ground. A stupid waste of power. Rope was cheap and it wasn't like she cared about anyone who'd ever been executed on this tree. But it was the principle of the thing and right now Liliana's principles extended a hearty fuck you, to the Church and anything resembling 'Avacyn's grace.'

As they passed beneath the tree into the heart of the garden, the fruit trees gave way leaving an open view of the rest of the courtyard. The Kirch Falls thundered beneath them down into the Lake of Herons, but even the massive falls couldn't take attention away from the focal point of the back of the courtyard: ( The Helvault )

For a moment, all sound ceased.

Then cracks appeared in the Helvault, rays of light piercing through the night from within. Then a blast obliterated the ghouls, knocked the cathars to the ground, and flung Liliana and Thalia backwards off their feet. A helix of golden light streaked skyward from the remains of the Helvault, illuminating the sky with its brilliant glow. The sundered monolith, fell to pieces and ribbons of dark Æther flew away in all directions; a host of demonic entities now freed of their prison. A tall gray-skinned, white-haired kor woman staggered out of the remains of the rock and vanished in a resounding boom. Liliana raised her eyebrows - a Planeswalker had been imprisoned in the Helvault? And then a guttural cry sent shivers through their very souls as a ten foot tall demon with huge bat-like wings that seemed to blot out the sky and arms that ended in wicked scythes pulled himself free.

Liliana struggled to her feet, mouth forming his name, but Griselbrand didn't wait, vaulting himself into the air and flying away. She stared after him, mouth agape as her prey once more escaped her grasp, and only realized there was still one last being in the Helvault when the assembled cathars gasped and pushed themselves to the knees in reverence as a luminous being soared from the wreckage.

Avacyn, the Angel of Hope: pure, whole, and eternal.

"Rise, my cathars," she said in a voice like a golden balm, spreading warmth and healing to all who heard it. They did, all except Thalia, who stayed on her knees, head bowed. From the golden spiral that pierced the sky, hundreds of angels came pouring out, voices raised in song and praise, their despair thrown off at Avacyn's return. "Go, my sisters," Avacyn commanded. "I feel a wrongness in my city, our people need you." Swords held high, the angels turned and arced away towards the remaining undead army in the Outer Ring.

Well, Liliana thought. This might just get awkward.

***
"Oh, good," said Prompto, with a deeply exhausted sigh and a sway on his feet that wasn't even entirely dramatics, "the actual cavalry is finally here."

And indeed they were, and they were remarkably quick about it, too, in a way that made Gladio feel a flash of anger, though he kept swinging his sword to clear up what the angels hadn't gotten to yet. "About damn time," he murmured, shaking his head and taking a moment, to watch the swiftness of just how quickly this particular tide had turned. He was feeling pretty exhausted, too, but mostly just irritated, and he went to fill Ignis in on all that had been happening in the meantime, since he could only imagine what filling in those blanks must have been like for someone only hearing and feeling all of this and not actually getting to see it.

"So what now?" asked Prompto, still somewhat vibrating from the sudden shift in the rush of adrenaline and the relatively sudden cessation of it, or perhaps that was just a shudder from the sudden chill of aftermath. "Do we help? Find the survivors, make sure everyone's okay?"

"I feel like we've done enough cleanup for these guys," Gladio grunted, his sword swinging back to rest on his shoulders for a moment before looking over toward Ignis. "Specs?"

( See? Angels are useless )

[Yet another installment, though the next one is the last! Still, y'all know the drill: NFI, NFB, OOC is great, heap praises on the head of chef_chocobro! Bits taken nearly verbatim from Angel's Rise and Demon's Release by Doug Beyer, but others parts twisted, spindled, expanded and smashed back together. Follows this post and this post and is continued here]

If asked what flavors of nightmare Liliana would have after the events of Saturday, she would have--well, okay, she would have laughed and denied the likelihood of any nightmares at all. But, had she been asked and, for some reason, compelled to tell the truth, she likely would have said she anticipated dreams of the Void and what waited for her there, longing for the day when she would be delivered - reunited - and how it had come to be there. And, in decreasing order of likeliness from there, possibly dreams about her first meeting with Kathophed, when he'd skinned her alive and then carved their contract on the new skin below it, or perhaps their battle in his throne room, but gone horribly wrong, where she'd lost instead of won, and, just to round it out, perhaps either a dream about the meeting with the giant brute on Shandalar or perhaps the atrocities she'd committed in that five month fugue on Tavelia, since the spirits in the Chain Veil had been much louder and more active in the last few days.

Instead, though, when she found herself in a nightmare, it was of those first horrible days after the Mending...

( I can feel this mortal body dying all around me! )

She lay there on the couch in Ignis' living room, once again covered by a blanket, face dry but eyes stinging, and just quietly laid there, trying to get her breathing back under control, doing her best to stay silent and still until she exerted control over herself again. Until she could convince herself that her legs were strong and straight and unbroken.

Until she no longer had the phantom feeling of dust on her skin.

*...root of evil...harbinger...carrying destruction...*

For once, Liliana couldn't bring herself to argue with the whispers from the Chain Veil.

[Contents under the cut NFB, warning for NPC death, both onscreen and implied. I don't care how good it was for the universe, the Mending was a horrorshow for anyone not involved. Open for calls or if you have reason to be around!]