Editing Journal - A Beautiful Death (section)

==Fighting Dalryssia==

I kept myself wrapped fully in Arla's cloak, as that seemed to reduce the distance that the doors reacted to me, and waited until Falcor was able to exert his will and force the doors open. There was a strangely-shaped room beyond that looked as if large scoops had been taken out of a solid form to make a room where 6 spheres joined up, although the floor was level. The entire room was covered in burnished gold, like the doors were before, and this reflected an intensely bright, radiant light that was beaming out from near the centre of the room. Light surrounded everything within the room as a result, and it was quite painful to look at. We could not mistake the figure sat at the centre, though; it was clearly Dalryssia, and she sat on a golden throne, a dark shadow within the golden light. She held a short wand (or possibly the top of a staff) in her right hand that had a fist-sized sapphire near the top. She wore a skeletal, multi-pointed crown with a sapphire on her head.

Falcor stepped through the doors and started casting from a scroll. Dalryssia lifted her hand, pointed the wand at Falcor, and released a bolt of golden light at him. It passed around him harmlessly, though, but his own dweomer was equally ineffectual against her. I ran into the room, not wanting to be trapped outside if the doors closed. Falcor drank a potion and tried to compel Dalryssia to take off the crown... remarkably it did seem to have an effect as we saw her reach for it, but as she touched it she paused and didn't finish the movement. Instead she pointed her wand between us and a brilliant explosion erupted around us. Although Falcor was ok, I felt like I was burning from both inside and out simultaneously, the massive energy overloading my nerves and forcing me to focus just to hold my own body together, if I didn't I felt like I'd explode. I just about managed to grab Kelditch's staff and focus on the throne, forcing the connection with the radiant place to close temporarily. The effect in the room was instant, the light no longer filling the place made it quite dark to our eyes, and it was only the sapphires behind us that illuminated it at all. Dalryssia screamed an agonised wail, and started chanting. Falcor reached into a pouch and pulled out the eyes of the creature we'd killed in the mountains and shouted at me not to look at him. Dalryssia turned to stone in front of me, with just her malevolent eyes left glowing with a golden light.

It was obvious that she had not been completely destroyed, and Falcor shouted at me to take the crown from her. It looked like a bony crown had been fashioned from some poor creature and then dipped in gold; the blue sapphire at the front shot through with black veins. Dalryssia's stone form looked skeletal, like she died a long time ago but kept moving somehow. I lifted the crown from her head and suddenly had an image of me sat upon my father's throne ruling over the realm of death. I had a strong compulsion to put the crown on my own head, the suggestion being that it would give me the power to achieve that aim, but I managed to force myself with some effort to drop it to the floor instead. Falcor noticed that there were cracks forming around Dalryssia's eyes, so he grabbed at her wand and literally broke her stone fingers to force it away from her. He warned me again and once more lifted the deadly eyes up in front of her face, reversing the cracks for the moment. He said the obvious: "we need to finish her".

I drove Aramat into her eye socket, aflame, but that just revealed a light that affected my already unstable energy levels. I asked Falcor if he had a normal weapon, and he had a dagger, and stabbed myself with it just to relieve some of the pressure. I then took the dagger of Sullinassauri and plunged it into the hole that Aramat had created. There was a sudden implosion, and then a cloud of death surrounded us. I managed to fling myself backwards, but I had to keep my hand on the dagger within it. I felt a sudden inrush of energy, but this time it was of my father's realm, or felt like it, and it drained my energy completely. I was still conscious, though, and turned to see that Falcor had suddenly taken dragon form to protect himself from the deathly energy.

The sudden inrush of energy from death caught me off guard, and in that moment I had never been more aware of my divine heritage. I felt like a God with a birthright of power, ready to depose my father and rule in his place. I sensed that I could use the power here in this place, as well as the connections there, to transport myself straight into Kraldar's throne room. The only thing that stopped me leaving in that moment was the desire to take the crown first, knowing it would feed my power. I placed it on my head, knowing that now was the time to defeat my father. I noted that Falcor had resumed his human form, his armour returning in an instant, which was unusual. I drew Aramat, which burst into flame at once, and asked if he would join me in fighting Kraldar. Falcor flinched, whether because Aramat was trying to feed on his power, or because he was afraid of Kraldar I'm not sure. He was weaker than I thought; I would go without him. I started to carve a portal in the air before me with Aramat, instinctively knowing what to do so that I could return to my birthplace.

Falcor, meanwhile, grabbed a pot of Arad's ointment and managed to daub it on parts of my exposed arm, my now zombified flesh starting to heal as he did so. As this energy, opposed as it was to Kraldar's realm, seeped into me I was suddenly able to shake off the compulsion to rush to a confrontation with my father. It was insanity - what was I doing?! I dropped Sulinassauri's dagger and desperately used Kelditch's staff to close the portal I'd started to open. I scraped the dagger into a sack with Ulric's sword and turned to run. I had only briefly contained the natural gate to the place of positive radiance, and it was starting to open! Despite sprinting, we could not hope to outrun the light that was spreading quickly from behind us for long (in fact Falcor picked me up to carry me at some point). Suddenly a huge, radiant dragon swept us up in its talons as the light engulfed us and I felt us suddenly shift place, appearing in an instant outside the cave again. The great beast dropped me as it recoiled, ugly black blotches apparent on its scales where she had touched me. She had saved us both, though.

Falcor apologised, but the dragon understood that it was necessary. She did wonder why he was traveling with something so foul, though. I looked over at the cave mouth, which was now bathed in a golden glow. We would have been utterly destroyed by that power had we not been brought here instead. Apparently the creatures that we had encountered there had "found the light they were looking for"... I just shuddered at what that really meant. Falcor, though, spoke with her at length, talking of relighting the fires within the forge; she said that when the bonds were broken (and there was only one now) then she might be summoned to help. She called herself "Light of All Life".

I removed the sack from my head, the false crown falling as dust from where it had sat, destroyed by the true light. The real one must be in the castle, which is where Falcor would go next. I, though, now had the pallor of death about me. On the plus side I wouldn't have to worry about being too beautiful... but I wasn't keen on my heritage being so obvious for all to see.