Swamp of the Ancients

[kjaslkdjiehdfba]

The leg went through Tommy's back and out his chest and landed in front of him. His eyes widened as it began reattaching itself back to his knee. The Sounds were that of flesh being sliced and spliced, excruciating but Tommy loved every moment. He bounced up in joy and turned around and faced the man. Tommy's emotion drastically flipped, his eyes were wide and his mouth kept giving a gleeful smile. "Yay, my leg!!!." He rushed at the man instantly and gave him a polite hug. "Thank you." Tommy laughed Joyously over the reunion of his thrown leg. "Thank you so much Mr." Tommy's voice sounded that of small polite five year old boy, almost a squeal.  

[SpokenSoftly]

((Note: Hale already has materials for nine of the other ten Artifacts on his person, and keeps them there at all times. However, they have no abilities and are useless as weapons until he performs the Ritual required to make an Artifact. The objects are as follows:

A book
A small square of black metal
A pair of white silk gloves
A dagger
A pair of black velvet shoes
A ring with a heat-twist
A bow, without string
A large dark blue pearl
A short, thin length of wood))

the being blinked as he was hugged, the motion of the shorter undead causing his hood to fall back, revealing an obviously-deceased face. It was scowling.

The being - Hale, of Itnu origin - reached into the recesses of his robe and withdrew a plain white mage's spellbook, the word Sataris embossed in simple, elegant onyx-black lettering on the front. Flipping to the exact middle, Hale drew several runes with his ring finger and tapped the words with the same. A voice not unlike Hale's issued from the book. "Discontinue hugging me immediately. I am busy."  

[PandArsonist]

Demitri's attack worked, the demons being far from bright, in many ways. As expected, the apparent leader of the group was hit by the attack, and thus enraged, quickly closed in on his target, without putting up any defense. He met his demise rather quickly at the point of the boy's sword, at which point whatever poor organization skills the other demons had began to quickly melt away. Quickly, they rushed in, all eager to avenge their fallen comrade, none of them learning from their leader's fatal mistake, none of them thinking to take any sort of defensive formation.  

[Rinexe]

Demetri simply realized a strategy in a second split that had seemed to evade his thoughts for the entire fight. A small amount of air collected at his feet lifting him roughly 6 inches above the water which was just enough for what he was prepared for. Though, it would have to be at the exact right moment. In their attack, upon reaching one foot from him which would likely end up with a fatality on his part, he aimed his cane at the water and an average sized bolt of electricity for a low-ranked mage shot out of it into the water. It was just enough to only send a slight tingle at his feet but a near fatal if not fatal surge of electricity through the demons. A grin came across his face but he also kept his sword outward just in case.  

[kjaslkdjiehdfba]

Tommy finally decided to let go of the man, who had a unique face. It was different from most things. "Well ok then."Tommy said with a stern attitude, he walked slowly back and didn't mutter words. He lifted up his hand and a dazzling swirl of red light gathered and it condensed into a sphere.  

[PandArsonist]

The demons howled, first in rage, and then pain as the electricity surged through them, paralyzing them and thus rooting them in place, as the electricity arced between them, increasing it's damage with every passing moment, it's current amplified by the very weapons they had summoned in their futile attempts to defeat Demetri. Even after they had died and their bodies collapsed, there were sparks still passing betwixt their bodies. Though their defeat had not come in a way they had expected, it had been inevitable from the start; the male had won, and they had never stood a chance. Slowly, their bodies eventually crumbled, and their broken cores of darkness melted away, into the shadows of the swamp, leaving Demetri in total solitude.  

[SpokenSoftly]

As the demons vapor'd away, Hale clapped slowly. Not bad. Not bad at all. The Sataris floated over Hale's right shoulder as he walked towards Demitri. It translated his thoughts into the common tongue as he walked. "Bravo, bravo. Impressive display for a young one. You have skill and potential in amounts equal to each other, as do all on this sphere which has been forsaken by the Great Ruler over All of Creation, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and Ultimate End, Lord Ar-"

The Sataris stuttered for a second as Hale's fist thumped the spine. Damned thing was acting up again. Its translations were always so literal. Perhaps when he had invested a bit more of his skill into improving the damnable piece he could finally get it a bit more... accurate. Recreating an Artifact was an arduous process, but this place, this swamp of darkness... It was perfect. Magic fairly congealed in the mist here, and making the Sataris - currently nothing more than an empty spell tome bound with an ancient and deteriorating Tongues Enchantment - into The Sataris would be easier here than almost anywhere else in the world. In matter of fact, the only easier place would be its Bound point, the unique magical point that only existed for Artifacts and similarly-powerful items, where the Piece of Creation that went into their making had been acquired. But that valley had been submerged for two thousand years, and Hale no longer had the command over the elements that he once did.  

[Rinexe]

Now that the majority of the electricity had subsided, he let the levitation subside and landed back into the murky water. A tad bit of electricity went through his body but went straight back out. It wasn't enough to do any harm, but enough to cause a quick shiver. He heard clapping near him and turned to face the culprit. Some odd language seemed to be coming from the book. It seemed to be the common tongue but a tad different. It sounded a lot like how Defaeco's people were speaking when he saw them above the ground. Either way, Demetri did not know much of the common tongue, and the broken knowledge of it came from his occasional sighting of a commoner from Ethral City traveling about the swamps.

He questioned the point where the book started to ramble on into nothing. At this point, he had three questions: Why is a book talking to me, why is a book talking, and who is this man? Demetri walked forward to meet the... humanoid, as it seemed. Demetri used the common courtesy he had learned and made out the only sentence he could in common. "I speak not common."  

[SpokenSoftly]

Hale tapped his finger a few times on the spine of the Sataris and it repeated the same sentence in the Tradespeech, guaranteed to be at least partly comprehensible to the other undead.  

[Rinexe]

Demetri seemed to understand a small bit of it, and could only take it as what appeared to be a compliment. "Desheek," he responded. He bowed yet again as another tradition to compliments. "Zon. Tel tan den zon tahney?" It was unlikely that Hale would understand, but it was a hope that somehow, he knew the language of the swamp.  

[SpokenSoftly]

Hale rolled his eyes as he tapped the Sataris several more times. Was this man really so parochial that he didn't speak a lick of Tradetongue? It was the one truly-universal language. But at least now Hale could tell the Sataris that the translation should be for Swampspeak. ""  

[Rinexe]

"You. What language do you speak?" he repeated in his swampspeak. He didn't understand what he meant by it being more archaic though. He had only fallen to the swamp. It was the same it had always been. However, he did notice that the swampspeak that Hale was speaking, though speaking it was surprising enough, was quite different. "What do you mean, it is archaic?"  

[SpokenSoftly]

Hale tilted his head to one side for a moment as he considered how to answer the question, random bits of his thoughts floating through the Sataris. "Ancient... no, not appro... ...lder grammatical forms... ...o good way to say it, really. The dialect of Swamptongue you speak supposedly died out twelve hundred years ago. I speak my own language, which is called by your people the Magetongue, from a time before it became as it is today. I am... old."  

[Rinexe]

Demetri was taken aback at what he was told by Hale. "Twelve hundred?" he started, in disbelief. "I spoke to another one with the language just a month ago, in the old Swamp of Ethral! It had become a forest, but it was only a month or so ago." He threw his sword to the side but as it left his hand, the cane's sphere closed and the energy returned. He held the cane to the ground, now and was in a more relaxed position. At this point, he knew he was in a conversation no matter how confused he was.  

[SpokenSoftly]

Hale's eyebrows rose sharply when Demitri mentioned the Swamp of Ethral. "The Swamp of Ethral has not existed for nearly a thousand years. You are... well-preserved, but as undead as myself. I assume you are aware of this?"