Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Tee hee. Nope. Need external stimulus.))

"If my hunch is right," Aer breathed for the benefit of both Tekira and Wraith, "he's going to find--"

At that moment, just as had happened in the ship, the room seemed to give a horrible lurch--for Wraith. Aer and Tekira felt nothing except, perhaps, a slight spiritual change in the quality of the magick in the air. Wraith, however, had just been invaded to the core of his very being. The man posing as Rivus, laughing, collapsed on the floor. No one had to examine him to realize that he was dead. As he fell, the semblance of magick that had sprouted around him, the 'fire' he had been gathering and manipulating, seemed to snicker as it slithered impossibly fast out of the room.

((I'm kind of stealing Wraith for a moment, but I feel it's justified, considering that Wraith 'didn't know what to expect.'))

Aer ran to Wraith's side, ignoring all else for the moment, as the seemingly-invincible man staggered backward. The flows of magick around him were garbled to a point where Aer couldn't even begin to read them, let alone manipulate them; when he reached out to Wraith, the air was alternately scalding and freezing, humid and arid. He jerked his hand back, but then steeled himself, dealt a powerful mental blow to the magick barrier around Wraith, and lunged forward, pulling Wraith out of the vortex of scrambled magick. He seemed to be just in time, too - for the instant he and Wraith fell to the ground away from the magick anomaly, the entire thing imploded. To the naked eye, all that was visible was a few heat waves, as if the ground had been very hot. To eyes trained in magick, however, a horrific display of destruction had just been conducted. An instant after the vortex collapsed, a loud bang was heard: This was because everything in the vortex had been utterly destroyed, even the air. The noise was created when the surrounding air rushed in to fill the empty space.

As soon as the bang went off, though, everything fell silent. There was no sign that anything had even happened, except perhaps the daze in which Wraith found himself. Aer patted him on the shoulder a few times in an attempt to bring him to his senses.

((Oh noes, what just happened?! What was the thing posing as simple magick power?! Where is Rivus?! And just what is that rat b****rd planning?! Coming up in the next installment of... Affairs of the Hearrte!))

(( I think this rp is deaded. We tried to save it, but it just didn't work. Sorry to all. Now to find a nother RP to hijack and crash into the ground... EVERY RP I TOUCH DIES! crying ))

((So, somehow, after all that time, Bard doesn't post, and yet it's STILL my turn... stare ))

Flauros's physical form emerged from the tome at Rivus's command. His presence still filled the room, of course, as it had since Rivus had first wrenched him out of his son's grasp.

"Well?" Rivus demanded. "Did it work?"

"Went off... without a hitch," Flauros hissed, weakened. "The Wraith was... more powerful than... I had guessed... But it worked..."

"Give it to me," Rivus snapped. "Now."

With a glare, a dark strand of something like smoke extended from Flauros's chest, and twined about Rivus's throat.

"As you command," Flauros growled as the tentacle of shadow melted into Rivus's flesh...

~

Aer stared at Amryck, dumbstruck. He had wondered about his father's demon, but he hadn't expected...

Confused, he sent a cautious tendril of his own awareness into the air around Amryck. There was... a disturbance. Anyone not familiar with the man's aura wouldn't have recognized the change, but Aer knew instantly that something was different about the man. Something magickal. Something big.

"Amryck," he said urgently, shaking the man by the shoulders. "Get up, Amryck." He looked at Tekira, his gaze disconcertingly steady. "I think... I think my father stole the Wraith's power."

((OMGWTFBBQ?! Don't panic. The identity of Wraith, and all the psychic and magickal abilities that go with it, isn't rightfully Rivus's, and it certainly wasn't acquired through the proper method; therefore, the connection to it is fragile and tenuous, and with the proper jolt, the connection will sever itself and fly straight back to Amryck.

I'm bored. smile ))