>>5580861>>5580868>>5580893>>5580861You focus your senses upon the enchanted item, throttling its struggles as if your hands were upon the animating entity’s throat. Time seems to slow for a moment as you turn your full attention from the test of arms against the Green Knight to this new battle: the trial of will. Your meditative practice proves invaluable in this matter, and your training with your Novice –even more than your mastery of the sword. The energies which flow through Kinslayer’s glowing steel are not the most familiar, but nor are they utterly alien to you. After all, you have encountered demons before…
>19…And you even know this one by name.
“Irinnile.”
The sword rumbles, quaking in your grasp, and then… Geos still. Your nictitating membranes slide shut, and your perceive the world through the hazy lenses, gazing as if through a crystal into the half-plane between mundane material reality and the dimension of spirit and magic. There, you see her: your mother’s minion, her greatest weapon of warfare-by-other-means, her soulbound lover now torn asunder from her long-departed spirit.
The succubus hovers in place, where the sword was a moment ago. She is not unlike the creature you glimpsed in your torpor-dream, the voluptuously-constructed creature of hellish energies, made manifest in the form of a humanoid woman with curving horns, carnivorous teeth, cloven hooves, and thin, forked tail. Her hands, fine-fingered and ending in wicked points, clasp weakly at your own hands—now, as you perceive it, truly around her throat.
But rather than red, she is green—like her master’s armour. Her form is gaunt and wasted, weakened. She faintly radiates a red aura—a cursed energy, binding her and turning her to new intent. She is the sword, made flesh; the flesh is this demoness, made steel.
“You know me?” she asks, weakly, meeting your mage-gaze with shining diamond-eyes, gleaming with golden promise but expressing confusion, hazy as if intoxicated or starved half to death.
“I do,” you acknowledge, “and you know me. As I understand it, you helped to MAKE me… And last night, you visited my sleep.”
Something seems to click. The succubus’ eyes take on a bit more light of conscious thought. She struggles weakly, not to flee or to strike, but to lean forward and to perceive you more closely. Taking a chance, you release your grip—upon her, and upon the sword in the realm of material reality.
The sword hovers close to your now,--close enough to slice your throat and end you. The succubus-spirit reaches out to touch your face, to caress your jaw and run subtly, sensuous fingers through your hair with courtesan care.
Big Red's soul doesn't generally lower DCs at all, but just makes your Dragonshape and aura more potent and give you near-infinite mana 