The Musings of Nythrax

[lordnythrax]

A plume of acrid cigar smoke rose and dissipated into the tropical night air as the man who styled himself "Lord Nythrax" paced back and forth across the roof of his home. The cigar represented a vice he rarely indulged. He wasn't sure if the smoke had any meaningful effect on his physiology, but the sensation was still somehow satisfying in times of stress such as this. Human bones crunched and clattered beneath his feet, testament to the dozens of sacrifices required to build the impressive wards that protected the building. Wards which, along with it's secrecy and sheer isolation, made it one of the only places he was willing to leave Alisiea alone.

Alisiea. How had the girl managed to slip under his skin the way she had? Even now she slept soundly a floor below in the house he had invited her to live in and remodeled to accomodate her needs. (Not that he would complain. The bathroom he added had proved a delightful place to relocate his bust of Lord Blackthorn.) No one seemed to understand their relationship in the least, seemingly expecting each of them to end up with someone much like themselves.

That's hogwash though, he thought. The little miss would grow bored with her male equivalent in a week, and if I were to cohabit with a woman like myself we would likely murder one another in less time than that. Idly he punted a human skull from the rooftop and watched it land in the jungle below.

None of them seem to understand prophecy, he mused. It had irked him all along. He had listened to his companions as they spoke to the Baratarian, listened to some of them huff and puff about how they mustn't let daemons take over the world, or how they would go down fighting. Fools, the prophecy already fortells the defeat of this so-called coming darkness. That isn't what the fight is about at all.

To his knowledge the prophecy contained no conditional clause or alternative reading which would allow the daemons to triumph. If it was legitimate prophecy then their doom was manifest and unavoidable. And Alisiea condemned to a... "tragic fate" as the Baratarian put it. Nythrax stepped past his black altar and let his iron-shod foot fall upon a ribcage, crushing it.

That is the issue, he thought to himself. True prophecy could not be averted, but perhaps it could be subverted. The prophecy did not call for the death of Celestia's mother, the old man had made that specifically clear. It merely called for some tragic fate to befall her. Yet "tragedy" was subjective and the prophecy did not specify when this fate would occur.

Would being afflicted with lycanthropy be considered "tragic" by some uptight pontificating prophet of long-forgotten Barataria, he wondered? What about becoming the paramour of a powerful necromancer and vampire, coming to live in his dark manse? Would the writer of this prophecy have considered that a tragedy? Alisiea herself seemed happy, but she was merely a subject of the prophecy, not the author, and certainly some would consider her situation in a poor light if they knew the truth of it.

The ambiguity was maddening, yet it provided the opportunity for salvation. And if she were to die, he thought, still I would find a way to pull her soul from the beyond and restore it to life, unleash Kronus from his prison, and rain shit and fire down on the world in retaliation with her at my side. How is that for tragedy?

It was a mad thought, but he had always chafed at authority, and the idea of a cold uncaring "destiny" meddling in the affairs of those close to him made him feel more than willing to declare war on... fate, the universe, something. Just how had the girl managed to get under his skin like this, anyway?

Nythrax flicked his still-smoking cigar from the rooftop, and turned to go below.

[lordnythrax]

Once more Lord Nythrax stood atop his roof, his rapidly-becoming-customary cigar clutched in his jaws as his hands worked in the midnight darkness. The evening had been frustrating on several levels, and he found his task relaxing as well as productive.

"Mulgurgh... gluph..." his subject gurgled wetly. Incoherent as it was, over time Nythrax had become quite adept at deciphering such mutterings, or so it pleased him to believe.

"Oh now," he spoke around the cigar. "If you and your little friends wanted to live, all you had to do was refrain from attempting to rob me. I'm quite civilized and virtuous that way, you know." He chuckled, but still he glanced back at the teleporters which provided access to the roof, reassuring himself that he had temporarily disabled them.

Wouldn't do to have the little miss wake up to pee, then wander up here and find me working, he thought. Alisiea had been quite blasé about the bones and other sinister detritus scattered about his roof last time she'd been up here, but there was no need to push things. Jolicia would have ascribed the young woman's nonchalant attitude to naivety, but Nythrax wasn't buying it. It takes no formal education or great experience to know that bones equal death, he thought, and though he had never questioned her on the issue still he suspected she knew more of death than many did anyway.

He stepped back momentarily to recite the required verses in a guttural tongue, and then moved forward again to resume his work. "See, I'll bet you thought you needed this bit," he said to his subject in a lecturing tone, holding something wet before their largely insensate eyes. "And perhaps you do, but I fear Kronus needs it more."

If he is to continue empowering the wards around this place, he thought. Increased demands for security meant an increased demand for sacrifices, and these brigands and robbers were neither innocent nor powerful enough to placate the demon-god for as long as Nythrax would prefer.

The evening had been a bust in most regards. The latest mysterious stranger to which the group had been introduced had been even less useful than the last, playing games and demanding secrets in exchange for nothing terribly useful at all. It is fortunate that Natalya was not there, he thought, for while she lacks my investment in the struggle, she is far less tolerant of horse shit than even I.

Still, he had learned an interesting thing or two, even if none of it was directly applicable to his problems. The woman Aingeal was aware of his vampirism, for one. Someone had to figure it out eventually. I suppose I ought to have gorged myself pink and begun dressing in more cheerful colors a long time ago. Still, what of it?

More amusing was Aingeal's obvious concern for her friend Alisiea, as if Nythrax intended to gobble her up but was simply very slow in going about it. What would she think, what would any of them think to know that after some initial trepidation the little miss had offered her throat freely? That had been a very difficult offer to decline, but Nythrax considered himself master of his urges and knew that a pregnant woman in such difficult circumstances required all of her strength.

Still, he thought as he completed his work, she won't be pregnant forever. He chuckled to himself as he took up his black dagger and drove it home for the last time. He paused and said a few more words, ending the ceremony. Then he toppled the corpse from the altar.

The scattering of bones can be quite artistic, but no one likes the smell of a carcass rotting for weeks. He cast a simple necromantic cantrip over the remains, accelerating the process of decay by orders of magnitude. In less than an hour only more old bones would be left.

Satisfied with his work, he bounded down from his roof to the soft earth below with only a moderate muffled thud. He would restore his teleporters, but not until tomorrow.

Would an old prophet consider this to be ongoing tragedy, he wondered as he walked inside. One can only hope so.

[lordnythrax]

"Sonofabitch..." Nythrax murmurred, leaning back from the shadow stone desk which sat in the corner of his recently completed study, dungeon, and torture chamber. "Sonofabitch!"

It was so elegant, so obvious. He was almost ashamed that it had not ocurred to him at the time, but that was just as well since it kept any of his companions in the tavern from noticing a sudden change in mood on his part.

When the Baratarian had read his translated prophecy all had at first seemed as hopeless as possible, with Alisiea fated for a "tragic end" and even Celestia destined to "sacrifice" her life. Nythrax had originally come to his study to renew old research into how one might restore a dead person to a reasonable facsimile of life, research he had abandoned years ago when it was revealed that Vaere was not dead after all.

But as he sat poring over his books, the verses of the prophecy ringing in his head, suddenly it all snapped into place.

Yet I see another version;
One wicked and obscene;

Wicked and obscene perhaps, but also mercifully incomplete, with nothing to say on the ultimate fate of Alisiea or even Celestia. Another version.

here child taken young;
Raised as the demon's queen.

Taken by whom, rasied as what demon's queen? The Cult of the Seventh Death and the demon they followed, the demon from that other version of the prophecy? Certainly the cult believed so, but who bloody cares what they think? They would not be the first ones mistaken. Balric had believed his original Celestia to be the one of prophecy and it was seen how that worked out.

Raised by the cult, or by Nythrax with Alisiea at his side?
Queen to that cult's demon, or to Kronus?

It was elegant, it was perfect, it advanced every one of his agendas at a stroke. Alisiea and Celestia would be given chances to live. (Perhaps in ways they did not expect, but Nythrax knew that service to Kronus was at least not necessarily unpleasant.) The war against the Seventh Death would continue, Khal Ankur and his followers would be destroyed, and his fellow adventurers would rest easy in their apparent victory. They would believe the "good" prophecy to be in effect while in reality the "other" advanced in secret.

Perhaps someday they would wonder why Celestia had never sacrificed her life as prophecised, but not until years in the future, by which point they would be content simply to accept it and not look a gift horse in the mouth. At the same time, unsuspected, Nythrax would have done more to advance the coming of Kronus than he ever had before.

The little miss would never go for it, he thought as his stomach turned over, not in a thousand years, or to spare herself a thousand terrible deaths. He cursed himself as a weakling, for he knew that he would not be able to bring himself to force her into anything. Yet it is not her life alone which is on the line, and who knows what lengths a mother will go to when the alternative is certain death for her child?

I can only try, in my way, to persuade her, subtly, carefully. Still he continued to pore over his research into the restoration of life or something like it. After all, it would not be wise to put all his eggs into one basket.