Post by redhale on May 29, 2010 3:42:11 GMT -5
Mahri followed Redhale through the streets of Vailkrin and through the graveyard where a wary eye was kept out for ghosts. Damn things were sneaky things and just about one of the only things that unnerved the lycan. Finally, the inner sanctum of the library. While she wasn't as sensitive to the powers the emanated from the tomes, she wasn't unaffected. Stalling, hovering in the doorway, Mahri stares at each dusty spine as though the pages might come alive and attack at any moment.
Redhale slipped amongst the shadows of the library, of which there were plenty, melding in and out of the darkness. Being seen only in vague glimpses gave his movements a grace that they couldn't have in full light, the swift sweeping of cloth, that pale mask which seemed to float amongst the shelves. He turned back as he entered the back room, one grey hand reaching out to beckon Mahri inside, "Don't be afraid, as a guest of mine you have no enemies here." His voice seemed louder in here, underground, the beams of wood which the place was build with sighing in resonance with his words.
Mahri snorts and mumbles something under her breath but she eventually joins Redhale in the back room. Here the ill feeling is worse, and though she's told not to be afraid, which implies that it showed, she can't help but be. "Alright, Red. Check out ye book afore the librarian gets back an' slaps ye with an overdue stamp." Nerves had her cracking jokes, but a strong sense of loyalty forces the lycan to step slightly to the left of the doorway and assuming her full height of five feet and two inches. The timbre of Red's voice doesn't phase Mahri. After all, her ears worked well enough she could hear a whisper across the tavern.
Redhale didn't laugh at the joke Mahri had made, turning about to move towards a towering shelf at the end of the room as he made a simple statement, "Mahri, I -am- the librarian." His footsteps moved away into the shadows, each forwards movement accompanied by a muffled rattle of bones, "Just one I need, where did I put it..." His silhouette could be seen against the bank of shelves, moving back and forth across the entire room twice before he came to a stop, "Here. Can't hide from me." The tall cabinet door creaked open, what little light there was in the place reflecting off its huge glass face as it swung open and shut again, and when Redhale returned to the lit reading tables he held some unmarked book at arms length.
Mahri lets out a heavy sigh, "Figures." Still, she'll watch closely, ready for just about anything when Red made for a table with a nondescript book. It looked harmless. The feel she got from it was far from harmless. Coming further into the room, Mahri ends up standing sentinel at Red's right shoulder. More to peer over out of curiosity. Curiosity might kill cats, but wolves were made of sturdier stuff.
Redhale placed the book on the table before him, hands hesitating over the cover as the energy which gave him vision focused on it. Must take a lot of concentration for a blind man to read. Many of the books here had been transcribed not only into more common languages but with an ink the being found easier to deal with, but not this one. As he gently lifted the cover open a sigh crept out of the pages. He leafed through the first few chapters carefully, one page at a time, scanning over text scrawled in several languages, apparently searching for something in particular. The grind of his leathery fingers against the pages was just about the only sound in the library, but if one had keen enough hearing they could make out the odd creak from the main room, a quiet tapping here and there.
Mahri tears her eyes from the pages, searching out the source of the tapping. So far though, they were the only two in this part of the subterranean library. Alert, the lycan just might crowd a bit closer to the illusionist-librarian's back. "Red, whatever ye be lookin' for, suggest ye make it quick." Some instinct clawed at her insides demanding they take the better part of 'fight or flight' and flee.
Redhale held one hand up and turned slightly from the pages, pausing in his rifling, "Mahri, I told you I needed help because this could be dangerous. If you don't want to face that danger, then you shouldn't have come." He went back to his book, searching more slowly now, apparently not wanting, or unable to stop, "Leave if you must..." His muttering words vanished quickly into the silence, but it seemed those idle interjections were coming more often now, though Redhale didn't even look away from his book when a relatively loud creak sounded from one of the walls, a bending of pressure followed by what might have been the hushed scraping of scratching hands, buried in the ground surrounding the library.
Mahri grinds her teeth together and stands right where she is. He'd as much as called her a coward and damn it, that just wouldn't do. No matter how loud or close the scratching got. Eyes train themselves on the spot in the walls the sound seems to be coming from. Altering her stance, the alpha narrows her eyes, one hand hovering over the dagger nestled in the sheath that is always strapped to her thigh. "I am not going anywhere, Red. Take your time."
Redhale's voice rose from the trance he seemed to be in, a vague nod accompanying his slurred words, "Good..." One understandable piece of speech among a river of murmurs, odd extracts from the book rolling over in his mind to keep him entirely distracted from the growing shuffling and scraping which could be heard beyond the walls. Whatever spells the book held, it seemed one of them had begun its work on its own, waking the dead which lay scattered in the dirt here, though every able body found was trapped beyond the sturdy perimeter of the library.
Reece flickers into existence beside Mahri, silent as a wraith.
Mahri is so intent on watching that wall that the sudden arrival of the avian takes her off-guard. Not an easy thing to do, but then this wasn't any normal circumstance. Rounding on the winged male, the lupine draws her dagger, the blade held in a defensive manner rather than threatening. She positions herself so as to be between the intruder, in her mind at least, and the 'Librarian'. "Jus' who t'e 'ell are you!?"
Redhale continued his browsing, again allowing a snippet of speech to rise above the cascade of foreign words, "Not our enemy right now, Mahri." He came to a stop on one page, the turning of which was just about drowned out by the rattling and scraping behind the walls, the occasional choked groan even making its way through the dirt. It was impossible to tell if they would make it through.
Reece merely raises a hidden eyebrow at Mahri, the corners of his mouth turning in amusement as he looks away from her at the sounds emanating from the walls around them. Unlike the lycan he appears unconcerned.
Mahri relaxes, but that doesn't mean she trusts the avian, no matter what Red says. The urge to cover sensitive ears is overwhelming and resisted while the sounds coming from the walls echo wildly around the room. While Reece seems unconcerned and Redhale is lost in the book, the lycan edges around the table he reads at and would have happily stood atop it simply to act as a cover for the reader, if she didn't think that'd make her look more foolish than she is already. Speech is rather useless, even if she'd be able to hear above the cacophony, it's unclear if either of the other two would. Standing guard. It's what she's doing.
Redhale apparently had found what he needed, and was hurrying through it with respect to the rising tension of the moment, one hand tracing along the words in the book as another slashed lines of ink across a spare piece of paper. A single whispered word left his mouth as his writing hand slammed down one final stroke and then there was silence, the disturbed dead apparently sent back to their sleep. Redhale looked around himself, wondering at the other sudden calm, "Well, I guess I had it under control myself after-" Whether he finished his sentence or not, no sound was heard over the abrupt squealing that roared out, the sound followed by a deep rumbling and groaning, sounds which now originated within the room. Redhale turned about just in time to move out of the way as the large dragon skeleton which dominated the center of the room crashed down from its hung position and through the table which the book lay upon, still open.
Reece almost opened his mouth to respond to Red in amusement before he found himself knocked to the ground by an errant wing-bone to land in a somewhat disoriented heap just clear of being immediately stepped on. White mist which had been quietly pooling around his feet now draws a pale trail through the air and swirls around him as he calls out somewhat shakily, "Red!"
Mahri finds herself, once again, caged in. This time though, the bars are easier to get through. The wide expanse between ribs affords her the space to crawl away from the demolished table and sprawled book. Oddly, it wasn't damaged at all, probably saved by some preservation spell or another. Crawling back through the rib-cage, Mahri reaches for the book, her fingers stretching for the cover. It seemed rather important just then to put it back in the case it came from rather than let it sit out where just anyone could get it. From the rubble of desk and ceiling, comes the query, "Ye okay, Red? I...just." -stretch- "about"-reach-"have ye book."
Redhale lay under one of the things spread wings, saved from any bodily harm although caught very off balance, it took him a fair amount of time just to sit up, "I'm fine." He growled, "But be careful, I don't know if you should touch that." He managed to pull himself to his feet only to get knocked down again, this time caught completely unawares as the prone dragon skeleton apparently lifted itself back up on its feet, wings folding back and head craning upwards as if to roar, though the only sound it made was the harsh whistling of air blowing through its bones, and the clacking of those bones themselves as it whirled about to protect the book which had awoken it.
Reece rises from his rapidly thickening cloud of mist, a figure of strange luminescence in the dimly lit reading room. Extending a hand he says, "Look out!" A series of glassy shards materializing in the air before his hand and streaking with lethal cutting force at the dragon's bony head.
For Mahri, Red's warning comes a tad too late. As soon as the bones shift, she lunges for and grabs the book. Snapping it closed, the lycan rolls just as shards fly past her head. Cursing loud enough to wake the dead, so to speak, Mahri scrambles to her feet still clutching the tome to her chest. The skeletal dragon lunges for the carrier, the projectiles jutting from the thick cranium. Teeth the length of a long-sword close, just missing her leather clad leg. "Red..just what kind of book is this anyway?" The avian seems the person to get close to, but not before she rounds on Red and makes a grab for his arm with the intent of hauling the illusionist to his feet and dragging him a safe distance from the undead beast.
Redhale was jerked to his feet roughly, the pull just about tearing his arm right off. As Marhi begun to haul him away his robes would shift and shrug off her grip, letting him turn back to face the dragon which had already turned and started a second charge, "What kind of books do you think you'd find in a library which lies under Vailkrin's ancient dead?" His answer could be heard only because the library repeated it for him, the dragon's assault not the only thing which shook the room. As it descended upon Redhale the dark man raised one arm up, a shard of bone flying from his sleeve and speeding through the air towards the dragon, only to shatter against the monsters spine with much the same effect Reece's attack had. With a grunt Redhale curled up within his cloak, shielding himself as the dragon raced over him without so much a glance, instead diving for the book which Mahri held.
Reece watches Mahri drag Redhale up, not entirely surprised at the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of his attack. As he watches the arcanist perform a similarly inneffective attack against the dragon the mist bunches around him before he propels himself across the room magically, trailing fog like a blanket, to collide with Mahri in mid-step, shoving her out of the dragon's way. Not sure whether or not she had managed to hold on to the book he rolls to his knees, jingling as the links of his robe clatter against the paraphernalia now scattered on the floor. Striking swiftly at the dragon's rear before it could turn around he hisses, a stream of his mist flooding towards the undead dragon, crystallizing into ice and attempting to freeze it solid. It's also at this point he calls out, "Red! Is there any weakness you know of that this thing might have?"
Redhale struggled to his feet once more, the repeated falling causing him to think he might need a better mode of transport than legs, and set after the dragon once more. As the beast struggled against the vines, snapping free and becoming ensnared over and over again, Redhale pondered Reece's question. Unfortunately his train of thought was interrupted by the sight of more undead, a bony arm climbing out form the hole that Mahri's summoned vines had created. It seemed that now the veritable army of dead that lay in the earth around them had an entrance. Redhale swatted the first one away with a lash of his cloak, but in the time the action took two more had already clambered from the hole. The beings seemingly living robe spread to plug the hole as best he would while he called out to finally answer Reece, "Light! Fire! We need a..." A moment was taken to consider that his allies here were likely untalented in either of those schools of magic, and as he clutched the skull of another emerging skeleton with one hand he found time to murmur a curse.
Reece exhales in frustration, he'd thought of fire and then opted for ice because they were in a library. It also didn't help that he wasn't fond of fire... and that fire used up a lot of energy. Light he could do though. Casting his arms wide there is a roaring sound like the rush of wind through a canyon the ceiling of the room is occluded by a hot white light which chases shadows from the room like so much chaff in a gale. A twisting thread of light joins him to the spell above as it wraps down one arm, around his chest and back up the other. "This help Red?" The drawback to this was that his mist was now fading fast, and the ice that had formed on the dragon would begin to melt.
Mahri tucks the book under one arm, Red's call for fire readily answered even as Reece produces the light. It's a good thing her head is bent at that moment else she might have been blinded. Squinting her eyes, she searches through her person, eventually pulling a crumbled almost empty pack of cigarettes, sulfur sticks soon follow. "Strike anywhere..we'll see." If she could just snap a bit of flame..two of them go to waste, the third catching easily and giving her the necessary energy to whisper to the fire, encouraging the growth of the flame once she lays it on the floor. She is, after all, a druid. Because her attention is turned from the vines, they quickly slither back into the earth, taking at least a dozen of the crawling undead with them. Eagerly, the fire flares, finding a bit of fuel in the debris of the table to feed it's hunger. Now..about that book she seems quite reluctant to release. Undecided, she glances from it to the fire. As unconcerned with knowledge as Red seems obsessed, the lycan seriously considers setting it in the fire.
Redhale let out a screaming hiss as light flared into the room, the skeleton he was currently tussling with exploding with a crisp 'pop' before Redhale himself fell to the ground. His cloak shrunk up around him to protect him from the sudden flare, and before long he appeared as nothing more than a ball of seething black cloth. The dragon still raged and now had been set free from that which had bound it, and so it lunged at Mahri once more, but it seemed the flash of energy Reece had produced had better effect than previous attacks. The skeletal abomination's strike landed instead in the wall to Mahri's right, and it drew back with crippled confusion. Shocked out of his hiding by the crash he heard Redhale carefully crept from his cocoon, doing what he could to mend the hole in the floor by knitting the bones of fallen undead together, only to spy another team digging their way through the wall the dragon had damaged.
Reece drops his arms, severing his direct connection with the spell and allowing it to lose some of the blinding edge, though it is still brilliantly bright. A tiny part of his mind files away the knowledge of Red's weakness to light for future reference but as the undead start crawling out of the wall he takes one look at Mahri's hesitance and snatches the book from her hands, streaking across the room with the remnants of his mist emitting an ululating cry to distract the dragon, all the while trying to work out what he's going to do when it starts chasing him.
Mahri snarls at Reece, not at all pleased when he snags the book from her. Which might seem a bit odd given the fact she had wanted almost nothing to do with it before, and in fact had been more than ready to abandon her friend because of the bad feelings it'd given her. No matter, he has it now and the undead dragon and other corpses can start chasing him. She was going to be busy getting the fire to spread and getting Red out. She hoped to the Gods he'd learned what he wanted. While the flames chew through the fuel left by the destroyed table, she was adding more to it with the other tables holding candles and even a few books left atop them, as though whoever had been reading planned on returning to finish. It doesn't matter now and Mahri makes a decision, "Red, have the Bird throw that blasted book in the fecking fire. It's what they want!" Well, she will say that if Redhale comes away from what seems a futile attempt at plugging a leak.
Redhale gritted his teeth at Mahri's comment, turning away from the hole he was attending at such a perfectly inopportune time to catch a bony strike across the face. He let out a yell of annoyance and drew back, the arm that had hit him all which could fit through the hole in the floor any longer, though the damaged wall was something else. Redhale turned his attention instead to the dragon, who had begun to belch flares of black flame after his quarry, which did indeed seem to be the book, but Redhale couldn't comply with Mahri's wishes, "Don't you dare, Reece! That book is just about priceless!" In order to avoid such a possibility Redhale threw himself after the dragon, ignored by it as he snuck up from behind. As soon as he got close enough he reached out and clung to the monster's leg, the rope-like ends of his cloak wrapping about it as he began to apply the same process he had been using to plug the hole to the dragon's own bones, its leg slowly knitting into one large, unhinged piece.
Reece looks from the book to Mahri to Redhale and almost laughs, even if Red hadn't' said anything he'd have been unlikely to destroy it. Stumbling on an upturned chair, one of many scattered by the dragon, he trips into a belch of black flame, instantly finding himself surrounded by a sphere of violently arguing magics. Thanking whichever deity came to mind for the protective enchantments in his attire he places the book on the desk behind him, now that the dragon wasn't charging so much with Redhale attached, and pulls out his deck of cards, finally having time to do so. Holding the deck on one hand palm up he says, "Nine of Diamonds." Though the words are almost lost in the noise the deck reacts nonetheless, nine cards spring from the deck swiftly and taking up a pattern in the air. Suddenly appearing to dissolve a fizzling manifestation of ball lightning launches itself from the ring of hovering cards, bouncing off the ground, the ceiling, and then slamming with great destructive force into the base of the dragon's neck from above. The discharge momentarily causes him to have to look away and he doesn't actually see if his attack is effective.
Mahri said to Redhale, "Yeah, well so's my life and yours and the Bird's over there!" Incredulous, she watches while Red climbs the dragon and Reece sends sizzling balls of light towards it. With this much testosterone floating around, undead or not, the alpha hasn't a chance. There is also no way in all the Hells that exist and some yet to be discovered by some poor soul, she is going to leave the robed illusionist behind. Grabbing a stick that burns niftily just on the end, she races towards one of the still open holes, swinging the flame at a dull gray skull. Behind her, she's pretty sure that the lightening ball hit the huge creature. Still, she's going to burn that bloody book the moment she gets her hands on it.
Redhale was stuck to the speeding dragon even as it crumbled around him, the frozen leg he had attached himself to taking one last limping step before falling flat on the floor. While his body crashed free and slid across the room the head of the dragon continued to spew that black fire, though with its head no longer attached to its neck thanks to the explosive force of Reece's attack it was impossible for the dragon to aim the attack. Heaving himself up into a standing position yet again Redhale sought to finish this attack before the dragon could piece itself back together, which it had already begun to do thanks to the book's continued survival. The robed man glided across the room and snatched up the book which Reece had set down, and apparently not only to keep it from Mahri. He tore it open to find the page he had been reading earlier, scanning the words and speaking in some glottal, choking tongue. The dragon reared up again, its head twisted at a bizarre angle as the bones clicked into place, and seemed about to pick Redhale up in its jaws, skewering him upon those ancient teeth, but it didn't. Instead, the dragon's lunging head simply lowered, an action which was followed by the rest of its body as it bowed to Redhale's rattled form.
Reece blinks, a series of cards still floating silently in the air (hearts this time) in preparation for what he'd been sure was going to be all hell breaking out take two. Still, now he looks from the dragon, to Red, to Mahri. "What?"
Redhale cast Reece a sideways glance, a glance which let the dragon take another step forwards, which was enough to scare Redhale into keeping his attention on the dragon. After a long and tense silence shaky words could be heard from the undead, "I told you these books were dangerous, but I also told you they were powerful…" He stepped slowly towards the dragon, holding the book in one hand and reaching out with the other, drawing close enough to touch it with outstretched fingers, "I have learned."
Reece breathes a quiet sigh, the enchanted cards slowly going back into the deck while his attention is distracted. "You certainly have made your point."
Redhale snapped the book shut and let the dragon's bones fall to scatter across the floor, "My point? What point?" He looked back to the book as he placed it on the shelf he had pulled it from, "That these tomes are dangerous? I suppose... But you know what?" He turned about again, a playful grin in his words, "They're also kind of fun..."
Redhale slipped amongst the shadows of the library, of which there were plenty, melding in and out of the darkness. Being seen only in vague glimpses gave his movements a grace that they couldn't have in full light, the swift sweeping of cloth, that pale mask which seemed to float amongst the shelves. He turned back as he entered the back room, one grey hand reaching out to beckon Mahri inside, "Don't be afraid, as a guest of mine you have no enemies here." His voice seemed louder in here, underground, the beams of wood which the place was build with sighing in resonance with his words.
Mahri snorts and mumbles something under her breath but she eventually joins Redhale in the back room. Here the ill feeling is worse, and though she's told not to be afraid, which implies that it showed, she can't help but be. "Alright, Red. Check out ye book afore the librarian gets back an' slaps ye with an overdue stamp." Nerves had her cracking jokes, but a strong sense of loyalty forces the lycan to step slightly to the left of the doorway and assuming her full height of five feet and two inches. The timbre of Red's voice doesn't phase Mahri. After all, her ears worked well enough she could hear a whisper across the tavern.
Redhale didn't laugh at the joke Mahri had made, turning about to move towards a towering shelf at the end of the room as he made a simple statement, "Mahri, I -am- the librarian." His footsteps moved away into the shadows, each forwards movement accompanied by a muffled rattle of bones, "Just one I need, where did I put it..." His silhouette could be seen against the bank of shelves, moving back and forth across the entire room twice before he came to a stop, "Here. Can't hide from me." The tall cabinet door creaked open, what little light there was in the place reflecting off its huge glass face as it swung open and shut again, and when Redhale returned to the lit reading tables he held some unmarked book at arms length.
Mahri lets out a heavy sigh, "Figures." Still, she'll watch closely, ready for just about anything when Red made for a table with a nondescript book. It looked harmless. The feel she got from it was far from harmless. Coming further into the room, Mahri ends up standing sentinel at Red's right shoulder. More to peer over out of curiosity. Curiosity might kill cats, but wolves were made of sturdier stuff.
Redhale placed the book on the table before him, hands hesitating over the cover as the energy which gave him vision focused on it. Must take a lot of concentration for a blind man to read. Many of the books here had been transcribed not only into more common languages but with an ink the being found easier to deal with, but not this one. As he gently lifted the cover open a sigh crept out of the pages. He leafed through the first few chapters carefully, one page at a time, scanning over text scrawled in several languages, apparently searching for something in particular. The grind of his leathery fingers against the pages was just about the only sound in the library, but if one had keen enough hearing they could make out the odd creak from the main room, a quiet tapping here and there.
Mahri tears her eyes from the pages, searching out the source of the tapping. So far though, they were the only two in this part of the subterranean library. Alert, the lycan just might crowd a bit closer to the illusionist-librarian's back. "Red, whatever ye be lookin' for, suggest ye make it quick." Some instinct clawed at her insides demanding they take the better part of 'fight or flight' and flee.
Redhale held one hand up and turned slightly from the pages, pausing in his rifling, "Mahri, I told you I needed help because this could be dangerous. If you don't want to face that danger, then you shouldn't have come." He went back to his book, searching more slowly now, apparently not wanting, or unable to stop, "Leave if you must..." His muttering words vanished quickly into the silence, but it seemed those idle interjections were coming more often now, though Redhale didn't even look away from his book when a relatively loud creak sounded from one of the walls, a bending of pressure followed by what might have been the hushed scraping of scratching hands, buried in the ground surrounding the library.
Mahri grinds her teeth together and stands right where she is. He'd as much as called her a coward and damn it, that just wouldn't do. No matter how loud or close the scratching got. Eyes train themselves on the spot in the walls the sound seems to be coming from. Altering her stance, the alpha narrows her eyes, one hand hovering over the dagger nestled in the sheath that is always strapped to her thigh. "I am not going anywhere, Red. Take your time."
Redhale's voice rose from the trance he seemed to be in, a vague nod accompanying his slurred words, "Good..." One understandable piece of speech among a river of murmurs, odd extracts from the book rolling over in his mind to keep him entirely distracted from the growing shuffling and scraping which could be heard beyond the walls. Whatever spells the book held, it seemed one of them had begun its work on its own, waking the dead which lay scattered in the dirt here, though every able body found was trapped beyond the sturdy perimeter of the library.
Reece flickers into existence beside Mahri, silent as a wraith.
Mahri is so intent on watching that wall that the sudden arrival of the avian takes her off-guard. Not an easy thing to do, but then this wasn't any normal circumstance. Rounding on the winged male, the lupine draws her dagger, the blade held in a defensive manner rather than threatening. She positions herself so as to be between the intruder, in her mind at least, and the 'Librarian'. "Jus' who t'e 'ell are you!?"
Redhale continued his browsing, again allowing a snippet of speech to rise above the cascade of foreign words, "Not our enemy right now, Mahri." He came to a stop on one page, the turning of which was just about drowned out by the rattling and scraping behind the walls, the occasional choked groan even making its way through the dirt. It was impossible to tell if they would make it through.
Reece merely raises a hidden eyebrow at Mahri, the corners of his mouth turning in amusement as he looks away from her at the sounds emanating from the walls around them. Unlike the lycan he appears unconcerned.
Mahri relaxes, but that doesn't mean she trusts the avian, no matter what Red says. The urge to cover sensitive ears is overwhelming and resisted while the sounds coming from the walls echo wildly around the room. While Reece seems unconcerned and Redhale is lost in the book, the lycan edges around the table he reads at and would have happily stood atop it simply to act as a cover for the reader, if she didn't think that'd make her look more foolish than she is already. Speech is rather useless, even if she'd be able to hear above the cacophony, it's unclear if either of the other two would. Standing guard. It's what she's doing.
Redhale apparently had found what he needed, and was hurrying through it with respect to the rising tension of the moment, one hand tracing along the words in the book as another slashed lines of ink across a spare piece of paper. A single whispered word left his mouth as his writing hand slammed down one final stroke and then there was silence, the disturbed dead apparently sent back to their sleep. Redhale looked around himself, wondering at the other sudden calm, "Well, I guess I had it under control myself after-" Whether he finished his sentence or not, no sound was heard over the abrupt squealing that roared out, the sound followed by a deep rumbling and groaning, sounds which now originated within the room. Redhale turned about just in time to move out of the way as the large dragon skeleton which dominated the center of the room crashed down from its hung position and through the table which the book lay upon, still open.
Reece almost opened his mouth to respond to Red in amusement before he found himself knocked to the ground by an errant wing-bone to land in a somewhat disoriented heap just clear of being immediately stepped on. White mist which had been quietly pooling around his feet now draws a pale trail through the air and swirls around him as he calls out somewhat shakily, "Red!"
Mahri finds herself, once again, caged in. This time though, the bars are easier to get through. The wide expanse between ribs affords her the space to crawl away from the demolished table and sprawled book. Oddly, it wasn't damaged at all, probably saved by some preservation spell or another. Crawling back through the rib-cage, Mahri reaches for the book, her fingers stretching for the cover. It seemed rather important just then to put it back in the case it came from rather than let it sit out where just anyone could get it. From the rubble of desk and ceiling, comes the query, "Ye okay, Red? I...just." -stretch- "about"-reach-"have ye book."
Redhale lay under one of the things spread wings, saved from any bodily harm although caught very off balance, it took him a fair amount of time just to sit up, "I'm fine." He growled, "But be careful, I don't know if you should touch that." He managed to pull himself to his feet only to get knocked down again, this time caught completely unawares as the prone dragon skeleton apparently lifted itself back up on its feet, wings folding back and head craning upwards as if to roar, though the only sound it made was the harsh whistling of air blowing through its bones, and the clacking of those bones themselves as it whirled about to protect the book which had awoken it.
Reece rises from his rapidly thickening cloud of mist, a figure of strange luminescence in the dimly lit reading room. Extending a hand he says, "Look out!" A series of glassy shards materializing in the air before his hand and streaking with lethal cutting force at the dragon's bony head.
For Mahri, Red's warning comes a tad too late. As soon as the bones shift, she lunges for and grabs the book. Snapping it closed, the lycan rolls just as shards fly past her head. Cursing loud enough to wake the dead, so to speak, Mahri scrambles to her feet still clutching the tome to her chest. The skeletal dragon lunges for the carrier, the projectiles jutting from the thick cranium. Teeth the length of a long-sword close, just missing her leather clad leg. "Red..just what kind of book is this anyway?" The avian seems the person to get close to, but not before she rounds on Red and makes a grab for his arm with the intent of hauling the illusionist to his feet and dragging him a safe distance from the undead beast.
Redhale was jerked to his feet roughly, the pull just about tearing his arm right off. As Marhi begun to haul him away his robes would shift and shrug off her grip, letting him turn back to face the dragon which had already turned and started a second charge, "What kind of books do you think you'd find in a library which lies under Vailkrin's ancient dead?" His answer could be heard only because the library repeated it for him, the dragon's assault not the only thing which shook the room. As it descended upon Redhale the dark man raised one arm up, a shard of bone flying from his sleeve and speeding through the air towards the dragon, only to shatter against the monsters spine with much the same effect Reece's attack had. With a grunt Redhale curled up within his cloak, shielding himself as the dragon raced over him without so much a glance, instead diving for the book which Mahri held.
Reece watches Mahri drag Redhale up, not entirely surprised at the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of his attack. As he watches the arcanist perform a similarly inneffective attack against the dragon the mist bunches around him before he propels himself across the room magically, trailing fog like a blanket, to collide with Mahri in mid-step, shoving her out of the dragon's way. Not sure whether or not she had managed to hold on to the book he rolls to his knees, jingling as the links of his robe clatter against the paraphernalia now scattered on the floor. Striking swiftly at the dragon's rear before it could turn around he hisses, a stream of his mist flooding towards the undead dragon, crystallizing into ice and attempting to freeze it solid. It's also at this point he calls out, "Red! Is there any weakness you know of that this thing might have?"
Redhale struggled to his feet once more, the repeated falling causing him to think he might need a better mode of transport than legs, and set after the dragon once more. As the beast struggled against the vines, snapping free and becoming ensnared over and over again, Redhale pondered Reece's question. Unfortunately his train of thought was interrupted by the sight of more undead, a bony arm climbing out form the hole that Mahri's summoned vines had created. It seemed that now the veritable army of dead that lay in the earth around them had an entrance. Redhale swatted the first one away with a lash of his cloak, but in the time the action took two more had already clambered from the hole. The beings seemingly living robe spread to plug the hole as best he would while he called out to finally answer Reece, "Light! Fire! We need a..." A moment was taken to consider that his allies here were likely untalented in either of those schools of magic, and as he clutched the skull of another emerging skeleton with one hand he found time to murmur a curse.
Reece exhales in frustration, he'd thought of fire and then opted for ice because they were in a library. It also didn't help that he wasn't fond of fire... and that fire used up a lot of energy. Light he could do though. Casting his arms wide there is a roaring sound like the rush of wind through a canyon the ceiling of the room is occluded by a hot white light which chases shadows from the room like so much chaff in a gale. A twisting thread of light joins him to the spell above as it wraps down one arm, around his chest and back up the other. "This help Red?" The drawback to this was that his mist was now fading fast, and the ice that had formed on the dragon would begin to melt.
Mahri tucks the book under one arm, Red's call for fire readily answered even as Reece produces the light. It's a good thing her head is bent at that moment else she might have been blinded. Squinting her eyes, she searches through her person, eventually pulling a crumbled almost empty pack of cigarettes, sulfur sticks soon follow. "Strike anywhere..we'll see." If she could just snap a bit of flame..two of them go to waste, the third catching easily and giving her the necessary energy to whisper to the fire, encouraging the growth of the flame once she lays it on the floor. She is, after all, a druid. Because her attention is turned from the vines, they quickly slither back into the earth, taking at least a dozen of the crawling undead with them. Eagerly, the fire flares, finding a bit of fuel in the debris of the table to feed it's hunger. Now..about that book she seems quite reluctant to release. Undecided, she glances from it to the fire. As unconcerned with knowledge as Red seems obsessed, the lycan seriously considers setting it in the fire.
Redhale let out a screaming hiss as light flared into the room, the skeleton he was currently tussling with exploding with a crisp 'pop' before Redhale himself fell to the ground. His cloak shrunk up around him to protect him from the sudden flare, and before long he appeared as nothing more than a ball of seething black cloth. The dragon still raged and now had been set free from that which had bound it, and so it lunged at Mahri once more, but it seemed the flash of energy Reece had produced had better effect than previous attacks. The skeletal abomination's strike landed instead in the wall to Mahri's right, and it drew back with crippled confusion. Shocked out of his hiding by the crash he heard Redhale carefully crept from his cocoon, doing what he could to mend the hole in the floor by knitting the bones of fallen undead together, only to spy another team digging their way through the wall the dragon had damaged.
Reece drops his arms, severing his direct connection with the spell and allowing it to lose some of the blinding edge, though it is still brilliantly bright. A tiny part of his mind files away the knowledge of Red's weakness to light for future reference but as the undead start crawling out of the wall he takes one look at Mahri's hesitance and snatches the book from her hands, streaking across the room with the remnants of his mist emitting an ululating cry to distract the dragon, all the while trying to work out what he's going to do when it starts chasing him.
Mahri snarls at Reece, not at all pleased when he snags the book from her. Which might seem a bit odd given the fact she had wanted almost nothing to do with it before, and in fact had been more than ready to abandon her friend because of the bad feelings it'd given her. No matter, he has it now and the undead dragon and other corpses can start chasing him. She was going to be busy getting the fire to spread and getting Red out. She hoped to the Gods he'd learned what he wanted. While the flames chew through the fuel left by the destroyed table, she was adding more to it with the other tables holding candles and even a few books left atop them, as though whoever had been reading planned on returning to finish. It doesn't matter now and Mahri makes a decision, "Red, have the Bird throw that blasted book in the fecking fire. It's what they want!" Well, she will say that if Redhale comes away from what seems a futile attempt at plugging a leak.
Redhale gritted his teeth at Mahri's comment, turning away from the hole he was attending at such a perfectly inopportune time to catch a bony strike across the face. He let out a yell of annoyance and drew back, the arm that had hit him all which could fit through the hole in the floor any longer, though the damaged wall was something else. Redhale turned his attention instead to the dragon, who had begun to belch flares of black flame after his quarry, which did indeed seem to be the book, but Redhale couldn't comply with Mahri's wishes, "Don't you dare, Reece! That book is just about priceless!" In order to avoid such a possibility Redhale threw himself after the dragon, ignored by it as he snuck up from behind. As soon as he got close enough he reached out and clung to the monster's leg, the rope-like ends of his cloak wrapping about it as he began to apply the same process he had been using to plug the hole to the dragon's own bones, its leg slowly knitting into one large, unhinged piece.
Reece looks from the book to Mahri to Redhale and almost laughs, even if Red hadn't' said anything he'd have been unlikely to destroy it. Stumbling on an upturned chair, one of many scattered by the dragon, he trips into a belch of black flame, instantly finding himself surrounded by a sphere of violently arguing magics. Thanking whichever deity came to mind for the protective enchantments in his attire he places the book on the desk behind him, now that the dragon wasn't charging so much with Redhale attached, and pulls out his deck of cards, finally having time to do so. Holding the deck on one hand palm up he says, "Nine of Diamonds." Though the words are almost lost in the noise the deck reacts nonetheless, nine cards spring from the deck swiftly and taking up a pattern in the air. Suddenly appearing to dissolve a fizzling manifestation of ball lightning launches itself from the ring of hovering cards, bouncing off the ground, the ceiling, and then slamming with great destructive force into the base of the dragon's neck from above. The discharge momentarily causes him to have to look away and he doesn't actually see if his attack is effective.
Mahri said to Redhale, "Yeah, well so's my life and yours and the Bird's over there!" Incredulous, she watches while Red climbs the dragon and Reece sends sizzling balls of light towards it. With this much testosterone floating around, undead or not, the alpha hasn't a chance. There is also no way in all the Hells that exist and some yet to be discovered by some poor soul, she is going to leave the robed illusionist behind. Grabbing a stick that burns niftily just on the end, she races towards one of the still open holes, swinging the flame at a dull gray skull. Behind her, she's pretty sure that the lightening ball hit the huge creature. Still, she's going to burn that bloody book the moment she gets her hands on it.
Redhale was stuck to the speeding dragon even as it crumbled around him, the frozen leg he had attached himself to taking one last limping step before falling flat on the floor. While his body crashed free and slid across the room the head of the dragon continued to spew that black fire, though with its head no longer attached to its neck thanks to the explosive force of Reece's attack it was impossible for the dragon to aim the attack. Heaving himself up into a standing position yet again Redhale sought to finish this attack before the dragon could piece itself back together, which it had already begun to do thanks to the book's continued survival. The robed man glided across the room and snatched up the book which Reece had set down, and apparently not only to keep it from Mahri. He tore it open to find the page he had been reading earlier, scanning the words and speaking in some glottal, choking tongue. The dragon reared up again, its head twisted at a bizarre angle as the bones clicked into place, and seemed about to pick Redhale up in its jaws, skewering him upon those ancient teeth, but it didn't. Instead, the dragon's lunging head simply lowered, an action which was followed by the rest of its body as it bowed to Redhale's rattled form.
Reece blinks, a series of cards still floating silently in the air (hearts this time) in preparation for what he'd been sure was going to be all hell breaking out take two. Still, now he looks from the dragon, to Red, to Mahri. "What?"
Redhale cast Reece a sideways glance, a glance which let the dragon take another step forwards, which was enough to scare Redhale into keeping his attention on the dragon. After a long and tense silence shaky words could be heard from the undead, "I told you these books were dangerous, but I also told you they were powerful…" He stepped slowly towards the dragon, holding the book in one hand and reaching out with the other, drawing close enough to touch it with outstretched fingers, "I have learned."
Reece breathes a quiet sigh, the enchanted cards slowly going back into the deck while his attention is distracted. "You certainly have made your point."
Redhale snapped the book shut and let the dragon's bones fall to scatter across the floor, "My point? What point?" He looked back to the book as he placed it on the shelf he had pulled it from, "That these tomes are dangerous? I suppose... But you know what?" He turned about again, a playful grin in his words, "They're also kind of fun..."