Shadow Of The End

"Not looking like THAT, your not." Priestly snapped. "We are trying to be subtle. Subtle!"

---

There was a bit of a commotion going on in the Vox camp on Snowpeak; there was a group of the rag tag rebels gathering around a large billboard that had been set up.

Lyn nodded, for once agreeing with the scientist.

"Besides, what did you say your name was? "Death"?" Lyn mocked. "We certainly don't need THAT where we're going."

Silver sighed, and the horse disappeared, as well as her scythe. She landed by the group, brushed her hair out of her face, and put her hands on her hips.

"This is subtle as I can go, unless you want me as mist again."

"That will do. Now if you don't mind..." Priestly said. He directed the group through Castle Town, until they came to a large manor house. He unlocked the door.

"Please try not to ruin the carpets..." he muttered as he let them in.

Lyn ignored the spirit girl and followed Priestly. When they reached the house, Lyn dismounted her horse, reaching into the sack and handing Filly another apple. She loosely wrapped her reins around a nearby post- enough to appear tied, but she knew, not enough to keep her horse bound, should she need to run off for an important reason.

Once off the horse, Lyn scoffed amusedly at Priestly's words. "Your carpet is the least of our worries," she said dryly, but nonetheless followed him in.

Eiria also followed them in.

Priestly led them up the stairs, and opened the door to his Lab. It was a huge room; filled with vials and alembics and such. There was a table, where fragments of an old tablet were mounted, and a few other tables and chalk boards with equations and diagrams scribbled all over them.

Priestly took one step into the room and froze. He looked around, and shuddered. Once agian, he patted his coat down as if looking for something.

"...this way, please." he said, leading them towards the table in the centre of the room.

Lyn scowled, following Priestly with suspicion. She hoped he had something to show them, quick... She wanted to see the reason why she'd escorted him here in the first place. However, for the moment, she said nothing, and continued to follow him.

Eiria glanced around his lab curiously, she'd never seen anything quite like it. While science wasn't something she would dedicate her life to, the contents of Priestly's lab and the complexity of the equations drawn all over the boards somewhat intriqued her.

Priestly paused, and then turned to them.

"Okak, the first thing I can confirm is that the Corruption is not an natural occurance." he said suddenly rushing across the room, as if looking for something. "While exaiming some infected issue I found that the cells had a vast amount of magic energy in them, massivly more so than is normally generated by the body. The Corruption is essentially a single, magically enhanced cell that spreads harmful magic through out the cell. In many ways, it is similar to cancer."

"Is this magic local to Hyrule?" Eiria asked. "Or something foreign?"

"No. This is unusual magic. Not dark, light...something different entirely." Priestly explained, still pacing about his room. "This is why nobody has been able to cure it; the magic constantly mutates the virus so you can never pin point exactly how to kill it. Same concept, different design. Remarkble."

He paused, but suddenly turned to them. "But your missing the point. Someone - something, maybe, created this. That could only mean that that person made it with the purpose of infecting Hyrule."

Lyn's chest tightened up, her breath freezing for the moment as he described the Corruption in detail. So her mother... cancer? That's what this disease was like?

She paused for a moment before asking, "Can it be cured? If it's magic... Most magic has an opposite, right?" She frowned, not liking discussing magic. "I don't know much about magic, but I do know that all kinds of magic has an opposite that can defeat it. You know, light and dark? Fire and ice, that kind of stuff?"

"As I said, thats what makes the disease so potent. It constantly mutates, and it has no apparent counteract. Dark harms light, light harms dark. But this doesn't appear to have any kind of opposite." Priestly said.

He looked to the tablets. "And then...I may sound crazy, but there appears to be-"

There was a slight, creaking sound, and Prieslty looked around. "....did anyone hear that?!"

At the instant the creaking sound came, another sound rang out even louder- that of Lyn's massive broadsword being jerked out of its sheath and held before her at the ready. She stepped in front of Priestly, her narrowed eyes burning in the direction of the door they had come from.

"Who's there?" she demanded loudly. "Show yourself or we will cut you down!"

Eiria turned but didn't draw a weapon. She waited to see if a response would come.

Preistly began patting himself down again as he back further into the room, looking around nervously. He clutched at something in his pocket.

And suddenly, someone dropped down behind him.

The Assassin was so quiet there was barely a sound when he hit the floor, and Priestly had barely even registered there was another presence in the room before the Assassin pressed a dagger to his neck and slit his throat from ear to ear.

"By the Goddesses!" Steven exclaimed as he fumbled for his shortsword and glanced up and down.

In a second Eiria had fired an arrow at the assassin before drawing her sword. She could hardly believe what had just happened as her eyes flicked to Priestly's bloodied body.

Lyn whirled around, her eyes wide.

"NO!"

Instantly she had leapt forward, swinging her broadsword in an attempt to separate the assassin's head from his shoulders.

In an amazing feat of agility, the Assassin dropped Priestly and flipped sideways over the arrow as it shot towards him. and then precended to dodge underneath Lyn's sword swing. And then suddenly, he dashed as a magical wind threw him through the air, and went straight out a nearby window, making his escape.

As quick as a flash, Lyn dropped her sword and took out her bow, firing out a quick succession of arrows after the Assassin as he darted out the window.

Steven ran to the window and watched as the Assassin got away. He looked at the others and back outside. "What...just...?"

The Assassin had, quite literally, escaped without the trace. By the time they looked out the window, he was gone.

Priestly lay on the floor, dead, staring blankly up at the ceiling. His hand was still in his coat pocket.

"How...?" Eiria started, quite speechless. "Wait a minute." She went over to Priestly's body and searched his pockets. She had noticed him patting himself down numerous times; he must have been carrying something important.