Power… Even In Death

JP with Bandorchu, Omni, Lorem and Lucian

It was not difficult to get the supplies together for a fire but it would be much easier to move Tarmen to a better location where someone had already finished with cooking. The fire they found was ember and ash but it would be no problem getting started. Ultimately, Voah hoped that the head was nothing more than a withered vestage of the creature she had killed but there was the possibility that even now, the head held some magikal influence over Tarmen, or all who were there on Sentinel Island.

She would begin by just trying to let it burn. Voah placed the head in the center of the hot coals and added a cone of branches and logs around it. Then she found some good kindling to really get the fire burning back up.

The group watched the fire grow and consume the wood, but the head didn't seem phased at all.

So... it did still have some power left in it. Voah took a stick and prodded at it until it rolled out onto the rocky earth in front of them.

Some powerful artifacts wouldn't burn, she knew. They were taken to a special forge in Mizar, covered in runes and sumbols to melt them under the eyes of five priests of the major faiths.

She didn't sense that this head was that powerful, not like the ice sculpture and runes on the Alossi ship. That kind of power she could feel in her bones.

No, but this was going to take something more. She had never destroyed a magikal object before, but she knew other ways that it could be done.

Some methods involved strong acids or special ingredients that involved days of prayers and sacrifice. If they were going to do this now, she would have to use more practical methods with the supplies at hand.

Voah prepared a ritual whereby she poured a dollop of her holy oil over its brow and carved five lines into its forehead. Then she replaced the head to the inferno and prayed.

"Gods beyond this world, I pray thee to banish this creature and its power from this world."

The lips on the head seemed to form a sneering smile, but maybe she was imagining it.

Minutes later, the head was still fully intact.

The thought just occurred to her… if Gonyaul was a Vaux… why didn’t that help the head lose its power to burn. Maybe his negating power was not that strong, or maybe he wasn’t a Vaux after all. She knew little of them to begin with.

Alexis had never been witness to rituals like this before. Ifrinn, before coming here, magik had been little more than tall tales to her - for the most part.

“This … is very unsettling.”

Thinking back to Sentinel Island, she remembered very well she couldn’t do chac to that wretched creature. Seemed it was even more resilient after death.

“Guess your salt or your sword won’t help with this?”

Everything he had witnessed thus far confirmed Tarmen’s suspicions. The little bastard was seemingly toying with them after death.

He agreed with Alexis’s question, Voah being the only one to have any success against it.

Gonyaul was standing near Alexis and while disgusted by the object, was captivated by the process that Voah was performing. He had never seen anything like this being done before and the novelty of it kept his attention transfixed.

The shrunken head was not behaving according to the natural ways. In addition, it was indifferent to his presence. How peculiar, he thought. This opened up a flood of questions and thoughts swimming in his imagination. He wondered what they would try, or what would happen, next.