Re: The Relentless Slaughter [Round 1: Untitled-1]
05-21-2011, 02:58 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by engineclock.
Gannet was running, running faster than he’d gone in a long time. Maybe when the storm had come in the winter and the waves were smashing their heads against the rocks- had he run then? Maybe he’d dove, down to the cold sand and the eaten bones, maybe that was his head on the rocks, his blood in the water and his voice not the wind’s screaming over sea, not him, not as fast as this, not now. His feet scraped into the false earth and under his skin and his hallowed bones he felt the Oracle’s heartbeat ramming itself against him, over and over and over. He was faster than the wind and ran through the howling jaws of the sea itself, burning on the bleeding rocks and screaming for him to return.
There was a cry behind him, not the sea’s hungry teeth calling but a man’s, pain and fear and crushing weight. He shouldn’t turn back but he did and saw through the wind and water that the chemical man held another in his arms. Another what, what was that? Why did it burn with that light and shadow and twist in the air like a dying man’s hands? The smell of it was intoxicating, gold and black and white. He could see it from here, churning with the empty lights of things he did not know. He would know, he had to, no one on the hollow earth would stop him now.
He slowed to the pace of that not blessed by the Oracle, letting the wind die around him and the water lose its grip. The other’s eyes turned to him and his feet stumbled under the force of the bright thing’s weight. “For the love of God, Gannet,” he was saying, choking on air and the terrible not-scent of this place, “Quit that blasted staring and help me!”
The light and the shadow was heavier than it looked. Gannet’s claws dug into its sides as he tore it away from the stumbling man and the thing shrieked back like a gull. He had no name for the things he smelled under its skin. They were neither of it nor its kind, there was human flesh on the bright thing’s body and the hands that clawed at his arms. The fire inside it flared and the twisting shapes he could almost see burned with the black scent the Oracle had when it reached into the things not yet seen by the eyes of men and ripped away their silence.
“Gannet!” Gasping.
What would the Oracle say of the bearer of the light and shadow? Did it already know of these things, had it seen them before? He wanted to take the thing away from here and bring it back to the rocks under the water, he had to, it rang in his bones and his blood and howled for release, but the Oracle wasn’t here-
It wasn’t?
“GANNET!”
Was it?
There was a droning panic in his head that was crushed by the need to run again, and he did, claws piercing further the thing of shadow and light and it screamed again like the storm on the towering rocks and the bones smashed against the waves. He was moving again and the man of fire and smoke was yelling now that they had to find somewhere to hide couldn’t gasp keep running gasp forever we have to stop somewhere, only going to wear ourselves out at this rate, tripping over the ground and consumed by fear and exhaustion. The wind screamed back, tearing through the earth and water and raining down the sick scents of beginnings and ends and teeth in the water.
Ahead of them the dead-that-walked called back and pointed to a ramp Gannet hadn’t seen before, looming over them all. Had the rolling thing that chased them not come this far? It was hard to find himself when the earth itself was changing shape and nothing smelled as it should. He was no longer sure if this was new ground or old, if it had only been changed or was some new part of the land he had never seen.
How was he going to find the Oracle now, some part of him whimpered and was drowned in the storm.
Martin dove for cover under the back of the massive ramp, quickly executing a neat roll and ducking as far as away as he could from open air. After a few seconds he remembered to check if the others were still with him and glanced around hesitantly, not sure what to expect. Rollo had made it and was currently leaning against one of the ramp’s supports, heaving his chest in and out with a grossly exaggerated level of effort and fanning himself with one… hand? Paw? Hell with it, he wasn’t going to try and figure out cartoon armadillo anatomy right now. Or ever, for that matter.
The guy with the Matrix coat was more or less on the verge of collapse, half bent over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He was mumbling feverishly about something Martin’s augmented hearing couldn’t quite translate and seemed to be checking his pockets for any lost equipment. He looked the worse for wear out of all of them, though by the way he was glaring at the tall guy he apparently didn’t seem to think so.
“For God’s sake, Gannet, you’re hurting her! Put the poor girl down already.”
The lanky guy has somehow managed to get hold of the girl in the dress the scruffy-looking kid had shown up with. His hands were wrapped tightly around her ribs, and though he was shaking pretty badly he didn’t seem to be having any trouble holding her several feet off the ground. Small spots of blood were spreading on the fabric where his claws had started to cut into her skin. His head twitched downwards and he stared at her in surprise, giving a weird, nervous laugh; Martin winced as his claws opened and Dorin fell, soliciting a painfully loud scream as the girl hit the ground.
Zimmer rushed to her side as Gannet stalked off obliviously to peer around the edge of the ramp, sniffing at the sound of bombs booming faintly in the distance. The way he balanced on his too-long legs triggered something in Martin’s memory banks; a tall dark figure in what looked like a suit, impossibly spindly arms and legs and too many of both and a blank where a face should be-
He shuddered and wondered with some level of horror if this might turn out to be one of those games where the point was to make the player insane and start seeing things that weren’t really there. It was doing an excellent job of it so far. He coughed and turned to Zimmer. “You seem pretty friendly with that guy. Is he always this crazy?”
“Gannet’s an odd fellow,” the man replied, checking for Dorin’s pulse and frowning. “Harmless, though, no need to worry. More pressing is the matter of what’s happening to this girl’s body.”
Zimmer’s headache took a turn for the worse as Martin leaned in and Rollo came over curiously. He was sure it was just the unnatural stress of the situation getting to him, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. He would be fine in a moment, he was sure of it, especially since they were safe for at least a little while. It... it was odd that no bombs were falling near them, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure. The lieutenant shook his head to clear it, but to no avail. It wasn’t important. He’d be alright as soon as this passed; damn if it wasn’t inconvenient in the meantime, though.
Something shifted under the edge of Dorin’s sleeve and she screeched with pain, rolling away from Zimmer onto her side. Her hand spasmed and out from under her fingers crawled an emerald dragonfly the size of the alchemist’s hand. It flicked its wings sharply, twice, and sprung into the air, settling on the crown of his head; he tried to swat it away but it darted away from the blows and hovered next his ear, hissing angrily. Softly it began to speak in an odd-sounding language that made Zimmer’s skin crawl, though thankfully he couldn’t understand a word of it.
“Wow, look at the size of that thing!” Rollo said excitedly, suddenly acquiring an oversized magnifying glass that produced a terrifying closeup of his eye. “I think we’re going to need a bigger flyswatter if she keeps this up.”
Martin made a sound that tried and failed miserably to be a laugh as Zimmer abandoned his efforts to chase the glittering insect away. In return it began to furiously nibble at the collar of his shirt. “I’m afraid I don’t know what to do for her, if these are indeed the spirits our Lord spoke of. I’m not very equipped to handle cases such as these.”
As if in reply, Dorin groaned again in pain and covered her face with her hands. The dragonfly hissed and left Zimmer’s shoulder to flit nervously above her, chattering to itself in its odd tongue.
“Alright, well, we’re going to have to deal with that later then,” Martin said, feeling pretty sure that this wasn’t the right thing to say at all. Dammit, the puzzles this game was throwing at him were getting weirder and weirder. Was the possessed girl supposed to be representative of something, here? The player’s inability to escape their fate or some bullshit like that? Oh god, she was probably one of those characters who got set up as sympathetic early on in the story and were brutally killed just to prove that the situation was serious. He winced as she screamed again and clawed at her side near where Gannet had scratched her. Something was moving under her dress-
“Uh, g-g-guys?”
He looked up to see Rollo, now a humorously bleached white, staring directly in the same direction as Gannet, who was laughing sadly to himself and running his claws against one another. As the android hesitantly followed his line of sight, he felt what should have been his stomach sink lower and lower into his chest. Beside him, Zimmer swore in a way that he would have been mortified to admit to in any other situation.
“I-I think we m-m-m-might have some b-bigger problems right now.”
______
In some ways, Samael found the appearance of the colossus towering above him comforting. It was large enough to block out anything else he might have had to worry about, for one thing. For another, the regular rhythm of its bus-sized feet slamming into the ground was kind of similar to the basslines of the few techno songs he knew.
It was also doing an extremely good job of attempting to remind him of his long-lost home.
Four titanic heads sprouted from the monster’s shoulders, each bearing the face of a certain English football player and each facing a different cardinal direction. The mouths of the heads gaped open and were full of raging black flames that exploded out from between iron fangs; thick, billowing smoke poured from them and filled the area with the terrible reek of sulfur. A huge sports jersey hung off a still-sketchy chest, pierced at random intervals by giant spikes adorned with countless numbers of impaled skulls. Occasionally one would tumble off and smash itself to pieces on the craters the thing left in its wake. Even as Samael watched, flocks of tiny black pencils darted about the giant, filling in every inch of its terrible form with some further horror.
It four heads swiveled slowly around, staring over the landscape with their terrible, glaring eyes as the foremost mouth bellowed in rage, shaking the ground under the former demon’s feet. A single skull fell from somewhere high up on its back; it exploded near Samael and showered him in crumbling fragments of bone.
Like he said, comforting.
Gannet was running, running faster than he’d gone in a long time. Maybe when the storm had come in the winter and the waves were smashing their heads against the rocks- had he run then? Maybe he’d dove, down to the cold sand and the eaten bones, maybe that was his head on the rocks, his blood in the water and his voice not the wind’s screaming over sea, not him, not as fast as this, not now. His feet scraped into the false earth and under his skin and his hallowed bones he felt the Oracle’s heartbeat ramming itself against him, over and over and over. He was faster than the wind and ran through the howling jaws of the sea itself, burning on the bleeding rocks and screaming for him to return.
There was a cry behind him, not the sea’s hungry teeth calling but a man’s, pain and fear and crushing weight. He shouldn’t turn back but he did and saw through the wind and water that the chemical man held another in his arms. Another what, what was that? Why did it burn with that light and shadow and twist in the air like a dying man’s hands? The smell of it was intoxicating, gold and black and white. He could see it from here, churning with the empty lights of things he did not know. He would know, he had to, no one on the hollow earth would stop him now.
He slowed to the pace of that not blessed by the Oracle, letting the wind die around him and the water lose its grip. The other’s eyes turned to him and his feet stumbled under the force of the bright thing’s weight. “For the love of God, Gannet,” he was saying, choking on air and the terrible not-scent of this place, “Quit that blasted staring and help me!”
The light and the shadow was heavier than it looked. Gannet’s claws dug into its sides as he tore it away from the stumbling man and the thing shrieked back like a gull. He had no name for the things he smelled under its skin. They were neither of it nor its kind, there was human flesh on the bright thing’s body and the hands that clawed at his arms. The fire inside it flared and the twisting shapes he could almost see burned with the black scent the Oracle had when it reached into the things not yet seen by the eyes of men and ripped away their silence.
“Gannet!” Gasping.
What would the Oracle say of the bearer of the light and shadow? Did it already know of these things, had it seen them before? He wanted to take the thing away from here and bring it back to the rocks under the water, he had to, it rang in his bones and his blood and howled for release, but the Oracle wasn’t here-
It wasn’t?
“GANNET!”
Was it?
There was a droning panic in his head that was crushed by the need to run again, and he did, claws piercing further the thing of shadow and light and it screamed again like the storm on the towering rocks and the bones smashed against the waves. He was moving again and the man of fire and smoke was yelling now that they had to find somewhere to hide couldn’t gasp keep running gasp forever we have to stop somewhere, only going to wear ourselves out at this rate, tripping over the ground and consumed by fear and exhaustion. The wind screamed back, tearing through the earth and water and raining down the sick scents of beginnings and ends and teeth in the water.
Ahead of them the dead-that-walked called back and pointed to a ramp Gannet hadn’t seen before, looming over them all. Had the rolling thing that chased them not come this far? It was hard to find himself when the earth itself was changing shape and nothing smelled as it should. He was no longer sure if this was new ground or old, if it had only been changed or was some new part of the land he had never seen.
How was he going to find the Oracle now, some part of him whimpered and was drowned in the storm.
Martin dove for cover under the back of the massive ramp, quickly executing a neat roll and ducking as far as away as he could from open air. After a few seconds he remembered to check if the others were still with him and glanced around hesitantly, not sure what to expect. Rollo had made it and was currently leaning against one of the ramp’s supports, heaving his chest in and out with a grossly exaggerated level of effort and fanning himself with one… hand? Paw? Hell with it, he wasn’t going to try and figure out cartoon armadillo anatomy right now. Or ever, for that matter.
The guy with the Matrix coat was more or less on the verge of collapse, half bent over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He was mumbling feverishly about something Martin’s augmented hearing couldn’t quite translate and seemed to be checking his pockets for any lost equipment. He looked the worse for wear out of all of them, though by the way he was glaring at the tall guy he apparently didn’t seem to think so.
“For God’s sake, Gannet, you’re hurting her! Put the poor girl down already.”
The lanky guy has somehow managed to get hold of the girl in the dress the scruffy-looking kid had shown up with. His hands were wrapped tightly around her ribs, and though he was shaking pretty badly he didn’t seem to be having any trouble holding her several feet off the ground. Small spots of blood were spreading on the fabric where his claws had started to cut into her skin. His head twitched downwards and he stared at her in surprise, giving a weird, nervous laugh; Martin winced as his claws opened and Dorin fell, soliciting a painfully loud scream as the girl hit the ground.
Zimmer rushed to her side as Gannet stalked off obliviously to peer around the edge of the ramp, sniffing at the sound of bombs booming faintly in the distance. The way he balanced on his too-long legs triggered something in Martin’s memory banks; a tall dark figure in what looked like a suit, impossibly spindly arms and legs and too many of both and a blank where a face should be-
He shuddered and wondered with some level of horror if this might turn out to be one of those games where the point was to make the player insane and start seeing things that weren’t really there. It was doing an excellent job of it so far. He coughed and turned to Zimmer. “You seem pretty friendly with that guy. Is he always this crazy?”
“Gannet’s an odd fellow,” the man replied, checking for Dorin’s pulse and frowning. “Harmless, though, no need to worry. More pressing is the matter of what’s happening to this girl’s body.”
Zimmer’s headache took a turn for the worse as Martin leaned in and Rollo came over curiously. He was sure it was just the unnatural stress of the situation getting to him, but it was getting harder and harder to concentrate. He would be fine in a moment, he was sure of it, especially since they were safe for at least a little while. It... it was odd that no bombs were falling near them, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure. The lieutenant shook his head to clear it, but to no avail. It wasn’t important. He’d be alright as soon as this passed; damn if it wasn’t inconvenient in the meantime, though.
Something shifted under the edge of Dorin’s sleeve and she screeched with pain, rolling away from Zimmer onto her side. Her hand spasmed and out from under her fingers crawled an emerald dragonfly the size of the alchemist’s hand. It flicked its wings sharply, twice, and sprung into the air, settling on the crown of his head; he tried to swat it away but it darted away from the blows and hovered next his ear, hissing angrily. Softly it began to speak in an odd-sounding language that made Zimmer’s skin crawl, though thankfully he couldn’t understand a word of it.
“Wow, look at the size of that thing!” Rollo said excitedly, suddenly acquiring an oversized magnifying glass that produced a terrifying closeup of his eye. “I think we’re going to need a bigger flyswatter if she keeps this up.”
Martin made a sound that tried and failed miserably to be a laugh as Zimmer abandoned his efforts to chase the glittering insect away. In return it began to furiously nibble at the collar of his shirt. “I’m afraid I don’t know what to do for her, if these are indeed the spirits our Lord spoke of. I’m not very equipped to handle cases such as these.”
As if in reply, Dorin groaned again in pain and covered her face with her hands. The dragonfly hissed and left Zimmer’s shoulder to flit nervously above her, chattering to itself in its odd tongue.
“Alright, well, we’re going to have to deal with that later then,” Martin said, feeling pretty sure that this wasn’t the right thing to say at all. Dammit, the puzzles this game was throwing at him were getting weirder and weirder. Was the possessed girl supposed to be representative of something, here? The player’s inability to escape their fate or some bullshit like that? Oh god, she was probably one of those characters who got set up as sympathetic early on in the story and were brutally killed just to prove that the situation was serious. He winced as she screamed again and clawed at her side near where Gannet had scratched her. Something was moving under her dress-
“Uh, g-g-guys?”
He looked up to see Rollo, now a humorously bleached white, staring directly in the same direction as Gannet, who was laughing sadly to himself and running his claws against one another. As the android hesitantly followed his line of sight, he felt what should have been his stomach sink lower and lower into his chest. Beside him, Zimmer swore in a way that he would have been mortified to admit to in any other situation.
“I-I think we m-m-m-might have some b-bigger problems right now.”
______
In some ways, Samael found the appearance of the colossus towering above him comforting. It was large enough to block out anything else he might have had to worry about, for one thing. For another, the regular rhythm of its bus-sized feet slamming into the ground was kind of similar to the basslines of the few techno songs he knew.
It was also doing an extremely good job of attempting to remind him of his long-lost home.
Four titanic heads sprouted from the monster’s shoulders, each bearing the face of a certain English football player and each facing a different cardinal direction. The mouths of the heads gaped open and were full of raging black flames that exploded out from between iron fangs; thick, billowing smoke poured from them and filled the area with the terrible reek of sulfur. A huge sports jersey hung off a still-sketchy chest, pierced at random intervals by giant spikes adorned with countless numbers of impaled skulls. Occasionally one would tumble off and smash itself to pieces on the craters the thing left in its wake. Even as Samael watched, flocks of tiny black pencils darted about the giant, filling in every inch of its terrible form with some further horror.
It four heads swiveled slowly around, staring over the landscape with their terrible, glaring eyes as the foremost mouth bellowed in rage, shaking the ground under the former demon’s feet. A single skull fell from somewhere high up on its back; it exploded near Samael and showered him in crumbling fragments of bone.
Like he said, comforting.