#cursedlore

Brook Khidpuh Faeden fought down the scream that had nearly escaped from the knife glinting and slicing the air as it flew her way. Her limbs trembled as she pressed herself into the wall, aware that she had phased halfway through it in her panic.

She didn't know what had possessed her to come here. She was a ghost, wasn't she supposed to do the possessing? Well, if she knew how to do that, anyway. The little ghost silently opened the door and watched the Warden making his way down the hall, and she flitted down the stairs, letting out a tiny yelp and cursing lightly as she stumbled the last few steps. She hated that after all this time, she still hadn't mastered hovering. The spirit silently berated herself. She wasn't brave enough to do serious snooping; if she was a better ghost, maybe she would make herself invisible and steal important papers to give the others, but she wasn't a very good ghost, and that wasn't why she was here.

Her foxes.

A week or so after Sweeventide, she had gifted the Map Warden with a pair of foxes. After the recent events, she worried about them. She was unsure if she should take her gifts back from him, but even intimidating people bent on world domination must have hobbies, right? Maybe he was taking good care of them.

She cringed at the squeaking and screeches they made, hoping they wouldn't get too excited to see her. They might blow her cover; meeting the Warden after what had happened on the mountain might be... Awkward, to say the least.

Irondil The Warden reached his bedroom door, but stopped before entering. A noise. A terrible sound like the screeching of a tortured child. Something had stirred them up in the next room over. Did he have a visitor?

Warden tightened his lips and walked the other way down the hallway until he reached the furnace room of the castle. Inside the yips and screams were loud and growing even louder. Yes, there was someone in there other than the foxes he had been given. And he had an idea of who. Maybe he had not been imagining things in his office.

Brook Khidpuh "Shh, sh sh sh, it's alright, I'm here," she soothed the animals as they cried from their place, tied to a post. "Hush now, little ones. It's alright."

Faeden came near to the foxes, kneeling and allowing them to clamber over her and bury their pointed snouts into her chest and hair. She looked them over nose to tail. Their fur was lackluster, and judging from the size of the fire and warmth she could actively feel the poor things must be overheating. They weren't... starving, but they had most certainly not been this thin when she had last seen them. What were they even being fed? Their eyes were not as shiny and bright, either, and they seemed... too excited to see her. They had too much energy, even for foxes.

Worry bit at her. They couldn't be happy here.

"Do you need to be taken back?" she asked in a hushed voice as one bit and played with her hair, and the other curled into her neatly folded lap. "I could take you far from here. We don't live in the stone cottage anymore. That tree that I found, in the forest, it's grown so huge! I managed to build a little house around it. You two might have fun with all your friends and family, right? Or is the Warden good to you? Does he play with you? Mm, I don't think so. What was I thinking, giving you both to him..."

She froze for a moment. Had she heard something? No, just the thud of small paws upon the wooden floor. Right?

Irondil All in one movement Warden threw open the door and loosed a spell from his hand. The spirit was thrown back and bound to the furnaces behind her by some unseen power. But the Map Warden's face was impartial. He looked from the now cowering foxes to the ghost child, and scoffed. "Domulvmin. For what reason have you entered my castle unannounced?"

Brook Khidpuh Faeden gasped as she was thrust against the furnace, unable to move no matter how she might struggle. Terror lit in her eyes at the prospect of being trapped. Trapped... trapped in a room like this with nothing but the angry eyes of her keeper upon her. Her breathing stopped and the absence of a pulse roared even louder in her ears than one may have.

He asked you a question. Answer it, before you are punished further!

Breathless words tumbled from her, as she tried to remember how she was supposed to speak before lords and nobles.

"S--Sir! Forgive me f-for entering your d-domain, but I- th-the foxes, that I gave you, they-- I w-was worried, my lord, wanted to see if they were alright!"

Why was she talking like this? Wasn't this the same man who had threatened Mister Ollie, the man she had threatened back in the middle of her cold fury? She had- she had dealt with people like him before. In another time.

"Speak only when spoken to. Those of dignified birthing have no desire to associate themselves with a street rat in ribbons. Remember you place, -"

Irondil The Warden snapped his fingers and the spirit was released, but the room around them warped into a nothingness of shadow and shimmering, prismatic light beams. It was only the two of them. No fire, no foxes, no floor or walls. Only the illusion he had built for them. He did not normally show his sorcery to the people of this world. It was not necessary, nor would there normally be any profit from it. But this thing, this abomination of life needed to know. It needed to know what it was up against. By the Lady of Twilight no undead would tread on his land without facing consequences.

"I don't believe you. Stand. Or float, I don't care. Now, tell me what you have come here for or you will be locked in this pocket of void for eternity."

Brook Khidpuh Shivers wracked her frame as she forced herself to do as she was told. Where were they? What was this? He was capable of all these feats? Did they only apply to the undead like herself, or could he do this to anyone? Would he do it to Mister Ollie?

Fear gripped her, its cold clawed hands reaching into her chest.

"B-b-but, my lord, I s-speak the truth! S-- surely you have seen the numbers of foxes n-near my home? I thought you might like a pair, f-for the holiday, I just, I just worried about them!"

Only then did his words fully impact her. Faeden's eyes widened at horror at the thought of being trapped in an empty, lifeless place again.

"N-no, no, no please, p-please sir, don't leave me in here, not for speaking the truth to you, p-p-please!"

Irondil "They are not your foxes. You gave them to me, did you not? I still do not understand why you did this. Or how. My wards against the undead continue to fail me." His eyes narrowed, and as they did the room grew darker, yet the beams of colored light grew stronger without lessening the gloom. "How did you get past them? What kind of sorcerer were you before your soul was dislodged from your corpse?"

Brook Khidpuh "A g-gift, sir, they were a gift!" she babbled, the dark pressing down on her causing her stomach to clench. "I only worry about their wellbeing!"

She stumbled to a halt in her words, unsure of what his meant.

"W-wards? I've always come and gone here as I pleased, without touching any of your belongings. B-before your declaration, that is. When I thought you were-"

The ghost cut herself off before she made what would very much be a grievous mistake, and reconnected the thread of her sentence to another seam.

"I am n-no sorcerer, my lord, my life was taken from me on my wedding day. I d-don't, I don't remember very much of that life aside from being the prize of a nobleman. I was called 'street filth' and 'rat in ribbons'! I w-was no socerer."

She scanned his face, desperately willing him to believe her. She couldn't remember much of her life. She hoped that wasn't what he needed to let her go.

Irondil The Warden's red eyes glowed with the intensity of the Nether. Something flashed in the room, so quick that it was almost impossible to see. Then it appeared again, just as quick in another corner of the room. Again and again the image showed itself and vanished across the darkness. And then it appeared one last time in front of the spirit, the mangled and contorted form of her old body.

It disappeared once again, only to be replaced with the severed heads of several people the Warden knew she would know quite well; a black haired boy, a blue haired girl, a learned but youthful face of a librarian, and the disgusting leaking face of a witch. The heads began to circle the spirit, closing in on her and laughing in the voices that belonged to the true heads.

Warden smiled at the sight of the little undead abomination crouching and cowering in fear. And when it collapsed to the ground, its translucent knees brought to its chin, he waved his hand. They were in the furnace room of Femelv'Girn. The foxes were now fast asleep, like nothing had happened. "Leave."

Brook Khidpuh Tears spilled unbidden, and if she was alive she would have vomited. Faeden's form blurred as cold took her over and the edges of her vision darkened, on hands and knees on the floor and too frightened to so much as gasp for air. The images would not leave her head. The faces would not leave her mind. She couldn't forget them, they were forever burned there, the blood, the sounds, the faces, the laughter, the tears spilling like rivers off her face.

She couldn't move.

She was paralyzed.

Suddenly, dying to Dresden seemed much, much more preferable.

Black pooled around the whites of her eyes, her pupils shifting to red, but all that came out was a small, choked whimper. She shook so hard her form appeared to be clipping in and out of reality. There was nothing she could say. Nothing she could do. The Warden's warning to her swam through a thick haze of noise that the phantom images still caused, ringing in her ears. But she couldn't move.

Irondil The Warden groaned at the sight of such a pitiful thing. He grabbed the spirit by the hair, intending to thrust it out the door of his castle. But, it was a strange feeling in his grip. It was not the same as the ghostly forms of elves and men from his homeland. This spirit was different. It was more solid, more...connected to the world. "What are you?" he growled, pulling her up so her frazzled eyes were directly aligned with is. "Is this the work of that Mountain? What binds you to this world, Spirit?!"

Brook Khidpuh Faeden screamed when she was grabbed. She couldn't help it. His enraged eyes, inches away from her terrified black and red ones, bore into her like the chancellor, the way he would look at her before she was beaten within an inch of her life. He even spoke the same. Her throat worked furiously to produce sound other than the foxlike whimpers that squeezed their way out.

I don't know what you're talking about!

Let me go, let me go, let me go, please, please!

Can't breathe going to die again someone help me oh gods someone help me-

None of the words came out, and instead she screeched. A burst of cold white flame exploded between them, and Faeden rocketed away, crashing into the wall and falling to the floor. The foxes had woken up and were making a terrible, frightened din, and the ghost managed to tear words from her throat in a rasping scream of terror.

"DON'T KNOW, I DON'T KNOW, PLEASE, PLEASE, DON'T HURT ME, PLEASE, PLEASE-"

The world was dark around her, and her body had nearly become invisible. The tears obscured her vision so that the Warden was nothing but dark blur with glowing red eyes. This. This was so, so much worse than she had ever imagined things could go.

Irondil Disgusted, the Warden threw the ghost back onto the floor. "Fine. I am a benevolent lord. Say your farewells to the foxes and leave my castle. If I ever catch you here again, I will slit their throats and deliver their skins to that little shack outside my boundaries. Do you understand me, Domulvmin?"

Brook Khidpuh She slid across the floor, barely managing to choke out her thanks. She was dizzy from fear, threatening to simply collapse on the ground. But that would spell certain doom. The foxes whined anxiously as she collected them into her nearly invisible, shaking arms, and they slipped through her a few times before the spirit collected enough of the shattered shards of her sanity to hold them. Her vision spun as she forced herself to stand with them and face the Map Warden.

A spark of rebellion from her time as the chancellor's accessory lit somewhere inside her trembling form, and she dashed away as fast as she could manage, the foxes still in her arms. The leather leads snapped and whipped back to the post as she fled.

Irondil Irondil closed the doors to Femelv'Girn behind the ghost and the foxes after they made their escape. Once he was certain there was no one around to see, he let the false emotions vanish from his face to reveal the true fear that he had been hiding. As quick as a fox he dashed to the secret room and threw open the trap door. The advanced wards were still there, untripped and untampered with. The ghost had not found it.