Lady Seraphina — Roleplayer Guild

Susanna Grace - On the Road => Holbeck Village

'It will never work.'

"What?" Susanna murmured as she blearily opened her eyes. The ground was hard under her form and her bedroll didn't do enough to lessen the jagged feel of the landscape.

'Behind you.'

Suddenly awake Susanna kicked off her blanket and rolled aside. Moments later a loud crack pierced the air as something thin and heavy slammed in the space where Susanna's head was moments before, splitting rock through her bedroll.

Shamblers she thought quickly reaching for her father's sword. Unfortunately it had been lying next to her on the other side of her sleeping place and now the undead creature was between her and it. Two more shamblers emerged from the trees. Typical, she thought her mind working in an adrenaline induced overdrive. 

'First you see one, then two, then the picnics ruined.'

"Quiet," Susanna whispered before she kicked out, knocking the leg bones from underneath the nearest shambler. They were strong, fast and silent but they weren't very durable. With the moment she had bought herself Susanna touched her hands to the ground behind her head and shoved hard, aiding her as she leapt to her feet.

She snatched her father's sword from the ground and unsheathed it in one motion. The blade had been enchanted to repel most forms of arcana which caused it to glow in the presence of the undead. She would have much preferred a solid club for shattering the shamblers but she'd lost her walking stick two days previous crossing a river. This would do.

Susanna swung the blade around decapitating the fallen shambler before she stomped hard on its skull, which cracked like an egg. Unfortunately while she'd crippled the first's moments allowing her to destroy it easily the other two were still unencumbered and as fast and silent as any of their kind.

Before she could turn they were both behind her. She drove her elbow back and heard the sound of breaking bone before the other grabbed her around the neck. Her throat made squelching noise as her lungs tried to pull oxygen through the closed airway. 

'Blood.' spoke the voice in her head and not in a position to argue pushed her hand up her blouse to the rune that was burned into her chest. She pushed her fingernails deep into her flesh till liquid darkened her hands. Then she pulled them free. The blood was black.

The moment she could touch the shambler's cracked bones the blood burst into flames with a gorgeous, blinding white light. The shamblers, too close to pull away and too mindless to realize the danger simply stood at the flames touched their bones then raced along their bodies like they were covered in whisky. The fire turned a dark blue and in a moment the shamblers had burned away.

Susanna fell to the ground coughing as she gasped for air. Though she'd only be deprived for a moment the grip of the undead was strong and she knew she'd have bruises around her throat in a few hours.

'One... Two... Three... Better go before the picnics ruined.'

Susanna desperately wished she could give the demon a scathing glare, not for the first time either. She couldn't though. Lilith whatever else she was, was trapped in Susanna's soul, a disembodied and usually deeply disruptive voice inside Susanna's head.

"Bitch," Susanna muttered as she touched her fingers to the place she'd cut herself. The skin was already healed. Because of Lilith's influence Susanna healed faster than normal but this was different than that. This was vanity pure and simple. Demons liked their hosts perfect, any cut, any nick, any break in the skin healed instantly. Everything else, muscle damage, bone breaks, anything below the surface remain until her body could fix itself but her skin always sealed itself moments after injury.

'Not having fun dearie?'

"As a matter of fact," Susanna said as she gathered up her things and packed them away "you seeing how close you can get me to dead isn't my idea of a good time." She continued to move quickly and methodically though with what little she owned it didn't take long till she was ready to travel. Lilith might have been a demon and in this form a major pain but she was right. Three shamblers meant more would be in the area soon. She had to start moving and her destination by her estimates wasn't far away, the village of Holbeck.

As she moved through the trees Lilith spoke again.

'I have told, it will never work.'

"And I'm sure your final resting place at the end of this has nothing to do with that assessment."

'The Lesser Key is not something to be trifled with. It is magic that even the denizens of the underworld leave well enough alone. There's a reason this purifier you are searching for keeps it away from others. It is dangerous.'

"And it can help me to be myself again. I can't live like this, I create hellfire from my own blood, I see the darkness in people's souls, I drink human blood and it tastes, it tastes delicious. This is hell for me Lilith, but what would you know of that."

'You believe I am unfamiliar with hell? Child the Lesser Key opens a portal to the Goetia, a great prison beneath the City of Dis in the fifth circle of the underworld. It is a place that houses seventy two demons so dangerous even the archdemons feared them. If you think you know the underworld now your heart will stop when you see what's on the other side of that portal.'

"I don't care about the cost Lilith, my life is ended either way, the least I can have is the rest of my mortal years without you playing games with my mind."

'You cannot even be sure the grimoire will do what you wish of it. The ritual that crazed elf used on us was invented by him with pieces taken from a hundred different dark spells. Why would you believe something as old as the Goetia Grimoire could undo such a haphazardous spell?'

"Because it has to." Susanna could almost feel Lilith rolling her eyes.

'Those feelings will destroy us both. The Goetia is something no human should ever see and no demons wants to lay eyes on. I warned you, remember that.'

Susanna let out an angry sigh as Lilith fell silent. She's spent twelve months trying to do things the right way, the safe way. Tracking down rituals and spells, demon summonings and bargains. Nothing she found yielded any result and now after living with the creature for three years, two as a bystander to horrible atrocities and one in command but just as helpless to remedy the situation Susanna found herself willing to do anything just to be rid of the demon. Consequences be damned.

Eventually the village she'd been searching for came in sight. Holbeck was not large but if Susanna was very very lucky the man she was searching for did, as the rumors said, now live here. According to information painstakingly gained the man in possession of the Lesser Key of Solomon was an old sage and practitioner of purification magic. In these dark times he kept the cosmic balance by tracking down objects of great demonic and necromantic power and sealing them away. Susanna just prayed that this village was indeed the place he called home.

'This is folly, Susan. It can only end badly.'

"I suppose that makes it no different than anything else you touch?" Susanna murmured under her breath. As she was nearing a populated area she didn't want to seem mad as she talked to herself. Luckily in the time she'd harbored Lilith, Susanna had become quite adept at speaking so quietly that only her own ears could hear.

'Turn back from this, working together our lives could be spectacular, but only if you abandon this course of action.'

"Desperation doesn't suit you."

'And apathy for everything that will fall in your wake does not suit you.' She paused for a moment and Susanna almost thought she heard a rather disconcerting smile. 'We are I think wielding the others nature. A curious thing when opposites are made the same.'

"I am nothing like you." Susanna hissed.

'I hope you'll remember that before it is too late to turn back.'

"Silence." Susanna said as she entered the village proper and began scanning houses, searching for a public building that might hold a record of the town's denizens, or even simply someone to ask about her target.
@Nariata

@A Heretic If you read the posts it definitely seems like everyone already knows, or at least suspects that fact.

Hrossbjorn differed in his thoughts about the newcomers. They each held a certain skill set that could make or break his effort to make it to the Castle Estel.  A woman who can control the weather could serve useful if the village turns out to be not safe, and a necromancer can bring in support from the dead if they run into the vanguard of the Mad Kings’ army.Hrossbjorn

Now, she had to endure a week of playing nice to one who she suspected of being a necromancer and another two of being abominations.Gyrid

I stole a glance at the pale man with the horrible book in his satchel. My hands reflexively curled into a fist upon thinking about the danger that book represented to the Harmony, but I chose to stay my hand. When I had won the support of the rest of the group, I would be able to safely turn on the sickened man and that poison he so worshiped. Katerina Wythono

Doesn't look like it's exactly a secret.

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