Brightest before the duskfall

[Anastasia]

Song and sunshine weave together as you feel the soft wind like Syala's gentle caress.

One thing you've found about your realm is that at times, a gentle breeze blows from Dweomerheart. This breeze brings magic, often no more than a cantrip's effects. Lights, phantom sounds, enhanced taste for food and drink and more all come from this occurrence.

You sit in the warm light of your private quarters. At the window Antenora sits, perched on the windowsill. She wears a gauzy gown of silken white, ethereal and often transparent in the light. The dress of a summer fantasy, of beauty too delicate to grasp outside of a treasured moment in time. Here Antenora sings a song of profound beauty.

It is a song that only uses a few words of Celestial. The first few words of a sentence and no more, meaning only hinted at before she sings pretty words that mean nothing in any language. Nothing more than beautiful sounds. Yet you begin to understand as you listen, your own lawful nature in natural resonation with it. You find yourself able to grasp Antenora's meaning without words, only the intent. It is a song of righteousness and love, one that sings of selfless love's ability to overcome the darkest night.

Words are not needed with that profound love and the joy it brings. Words are not needed when absolute order brings structure to love. It is joined by radiant sparkles of light. Opal blue, bright gold.

The fate of Creation rests on your shoulders and those of the other nodes. Yet in this moment you are at peace. For now the battles that await you seem distant.

Go ahead and set yourself up with this. This is purely a chance to stretch your legs and get yourself going with Alicia.

If you wish to include Marie feel free.

[Ebiris]

While her voice may be pleasing to the ear, Alicia lacks Antenora's sense of melody and rhythm so any contribution of her own would only mar the song being sung. She's happy to listen however, as much as she listens to so much else in the form of prayers from across Creation and sounds of Sylica for miles around and the steady undercurrent of rising tension that leaves her feeling taut as a freshly strung bow.

Antenora's song is a nice distraction from that.

[Anastasia]

Shar.

Shar.

Shar.

Whispers of shadows.

Prayers of salvation from the night.

The preparations for a war that may well be Creation's last.

Antenora's song is the counterpoint to all of that, and yet it is your own vigilance that is rewarded. A single invocation of your name. Routine, a prayer to you in its most basic form. A flash, an image. A simple guardsman of Mercia, a former mortal now in the form of a lantern archon. But this archon is perceptive and in the right place at the right time. One of Mercia's city squares. It's full of people going - both those living life and those that prepare.

An image. An unremarkable mercane. But he subtly, every so subtly, takes out a glass vial. A long finger goes to uncork it as you see with it is something a wretched green. Something about it is wrong, something about it turns your stomach. It's just begun to leak from the vial, just begun indeed.

[Ebiris]

Alicia trusts her instincts. Something nasty enough to turn her stomach must be dealt with immediately and can't be trusted to more subtle or indirect means.

A word of magic interrupts Antenora's song and then she's gone.

Quickened maximised time stop and then teleport to the square next to the archon.

Can I identify the substance with portfolio sense (purification is relevant maybe?) or a skill check? Can take 10 for 72 on spellcraft or arcana.

edit: Also clearsight and see magic are go for what they can give me about the mercane.

[Anastasia]

You can tell it is poison. A vile poison of death, of the undead. A spreading plague that would turn any it touches into the undead and may even harm spiritual beings. A terrible, terrible poison. Aerial, the wind would spread it of its own accord. 

The mercane is merely a mercane. He has nondetection active on himself but hardly remarkable, no better than what perhaps a talented but unremarkable mortal may manage. You could do far better before you ascended. There's no magic on him, yet...he's not in his right mind. He moves subtly off. Someone who has had their free will compromised, someone enchanted, charmed or otherwise dominated, in spite of there being no magic on him.

Someone with the skills to control such a person with words alone is a fearful thing, but it is known.

[Ebiris]

She repositions near the mercane and uses her dance of the unicorn ability to create a cleansing mist throughout the square that purifies all poisons.

Then when time resumes she neutralises the poison directly with divine power while her divine aura extends just a few feet around her, enough to include the mercane but no one else.

Dance of the Unicorn should work regardless but just in case doing the neutralise poison which I have to do after time resumes because I can't affect a held object until then.

DC 51 will negates.

Divine aura is set to daze, DC 32 will negates.

[Anastasia]

> roll 1d20+11
<Rei-chan> Kotono rolled : 1d20+11 --> [ 1d20=8 ]{19}
> roll 1d20+11
<Rei-chan> Kotono rolled : 1d20+11 --> [ 1d20=8 ]{19}

Consistent.

Just in time. Your power is enough to neutralize the poison - you see it dissolve in Dance of the Unicorn, your spell potent enough and your followup enough to still what remains. The mercane stares at you blankly a long moment, not seeming to see anything at all. For the moment at least, Sylica seems safe.

[Ebiris]

As soon as that's done, Alicia teleports herself and the mercane elsewhere. Sylica has its dungeons, and not the fun ones Syala makes to test people's skills in, but the ones where they put people who don't deserve their liberty.

Hopefully no one enjoying their day in Mercia need know how close they were to disaster.

DC 47 will to resist being teleported.

Meanwhile one of her avatars will join Antenora to explain her sudden departure.

[Anastasia]

> roll 1d20+11
<Rei-chan> Kotono rolled : 1d20+11 --> [ 1d20=5 ]{16}

Antenora understands and merely asks one thing. "Do you require my aid in this matter?"

Meanwhile the dazed mercane is taken right to the dungeons without any complications. He looks around slowly, as if some mild change of scenery that merits no special commentary.

[Ebiris]

"Yes, a mercane tried to unleash a virulent poison in Mercia. I think he'd been manipulated into it rather than magically compelled, but the outcome is similar. There's two obvious suspects of course, but who knows how many others? I could use your help in getting to the truth of things," Alicia says to Antenora via avatar proxy.

Meanwhile her real self with the aid of the guards at the dungeon ensures the mercane is stripped of anything dangerous and put into confinement, her aura no longer deployed.

[Anastasia]

In an instant Antenora is at your side as the dazed mercane is taken into the dungeon. His reactions are too muted. It's obvious now he's been influenced, more and more apparent by the second. Your daze has a large part of it at the moment, but this still isn't right.

Talona is the most obvious, but who else do you have in mind before I seek the truth from him?

[Ebiris]

Yarus would want to strike back at us after his capture and we know he's interested in poisons.

[Anastasia]

Of course.

I lament that Creation is so plagued by evil that so many possibilities come to mind.

With that Antenora heads into his cell. Are you going to participate in this at all or let Antenora work on her own?

[Ebiris]

She'll sit in to ask any relevant questions that come to her.

Also that lantern archon can receive a lucky deific gift! A permanent +2 competence bonus to perception should be in line.

[Anastasia]

It is simple to do. You feel the connection settle in place, the reward given. It fits the archon, an enhancement to him directly.

Antenora kneels next to the mercane, who sits there, in a daze still. She lays a hand on his forehead. Magic. Divine will. Analysis of his body and spirit. "Oh." Antenora breathes out. "Cruel. Crude. Butchery." She lists those off slowly, "I will restore and regrow the parts of your brain that were removed."

The mercane obeys, seemingly still dazed as Antenora's aura overtakes him.

Lobotomy. A particularly vile art of mind modification through removal of parts of the brain. Most effective on mortals, but sufficient skill can make it work on far more. I've heard of master pain devils that delve into such arts. It requires great skill in the medical arts and surgery, and as magic does it far safer and better, it is a rare art to see.