Re: The Relentless Slaughter [Round 1: Untitled-1]
06-05-2011, 03:36 AM
Originally posted on MSPA by slipsicle.
Earlier, in a newly-emptied valley...
Given that Vuul's armor offered a somewhat limited vertical perspective, the Battlecleric was unaware of Ke floating down on top of him. Nor was he completely aware of her as her voice wove its way through his mind, trapped as he still was in the fading euphoria of the battle trance. Nevertheless, he was still aware of the words themselves, and their haunting request spurred him into action. Rituals and tactics and incantations presented themselves in his mind, and his trained instinct pulled from them the Ritual of the Duel. His orators began the deep, pulsing sub-sonic rumble of Vulm'mram'Kham against Tyver Boole; a choice Vuul felt appropriate, given the incantation was first sung by one of his ancestors during a fight against a particularly dangerous human. He would make it a worthy battle chant.
His unnoticed guest clung to his helmet desperately, as the Battlecleric burst forwards towards the not-quite-human. In the same moment, he fired Blaze and Subjugate. A thick, coherent beam of crackling blue-white plasma lanced towards the Not-Martin, but suddenly he was not in its path. A loud KRA-KOOM! echoed across the poorly-drawn valley, and from off to Vuul's side a ring of air expanded. In its center was the Not-Martin, grinning manically, the barrel of his gun-arm still glowing from the weapon's discharge.
But as visually impaired as Vuul was vertically, he was in no sense handicapped for objects moving on his same relative plane. His mind received input from the 360-degree sensory strip which wrapped around his head, and processed all the information simultaneously. Where a two-eyed being may have been caught unawares by Not-Martin's impossible speed, Vuul had tracked the motion as it happened, and dodged the incoming blast even as it was fired, pushing himself towards the Not-Martin, remaining on the offensive.
If this had been a real valley, dirt and pebbles would be vibrating and bouncing at this moment, as the sub-sonics from Vuul's battle chant began to pick up. Their deep rumbling, just below the range of hearing, could be felt in Ke's exoskeleton. Her whole body began to vibrate as Vuul launched into the chant.
"WITHER!"
Vuul was nearly on top of the Not-Martin as the word exploded from his chest. Its arm, which had been lining up another shot, was torn from its socket, and sent flying across the valley. The poorly-made copy attempted to keep its balance against the onslaught of sound, and Vuul allowed Blaze and Subjugate to render its holy judgement upon the copy.
As the white-hot crater which had been the Not-Martin slowly cooled, Vuul felt some dissatisfaction in how quickly the duel had ended. He'd only gotten out a single word of the battle chant; The Ritual was not complete. His orators were still maintaining the subsonic rumble of the battle chant, and his body hungered with lust for combat. On his helmet, still unnoticed, Ke trembled, sharing Vuul's thirst for more.
It was in this state that the Tormentor found Vuul and Ke, after having brought his attention back to the stray contestants. Noting with some disappointment that his Martin-horror had been so easily defeated, the Tormentor decided to try a different tack...
Manic laughter drifted across the valley, its origin uncertain. Vuul tensed, readying for a new opponent, and when the air behind him rippled as some new enemy began to appear, his arm was already whipping around to cast down Blaze and Subjugate's holy fire upon them.
Yet, with his movement halfway complete, a nagging sense of uncertainty began to eat at him. The shape of this enemy looked... familiar. It wasn't until Blaze and Subjugate began to spin up once more in anticipation of being fired that Vuul realized what he was about to annihilate. It was an Alvum. A Lorr; a caste of the priesthood, dedicated to studying the Holy Word.
In a space beyond spaces, the Tormentor cackled, and gave an ever so slight nudge in just the right place...
Vuul watched in horror as his arm continued to move despite his mind's protests. He felt his skin crawl as Blaze and Subjugate thrummed with holy fire. He nearly cried out in angry disbelief as his finger pulled the trigger. Blaze and Subjugate pushed itself against him as the plasma tore through the helpless Lorr. Its weak orators whistled hollowly as it died, its cries growing ever weaker, until silence filled the valley.
Vuul stood, too stunned to move. Atop his helmet, the frail remembrancer held her breath, uncertain what the warrior beneath her would do.
Vuul didn't have time to do anything. Before he could collect himself, the valley was suddenly filled with the corpses of other Alvum, from all castes. Mutilated, maimed, rotting corpses; sputtering, gasping, Alvum lay scattered amongst them. Vuul, attempting to regain some sense of composure, quickly identified the closest of the dying Alvum, and rushed over to help him; a Vhor, the caste of the Justicars and Arbiters. Vuul considered himself fortunate to have found one who delivers the Emperor's Divine Justice here; in the Hierarchy, they lay above the Vulm, Vuul's Warmonk caste. Surely this Vhor would direct him to whoever was responsible for this... carnage.
Vuul knelt next to the shuddering Vhor, and lay the plasma cannon on the ground at his side. There came a hissing from the Battlecleric's chest, as panels shifted and locks disengaged. Still perched on Vuul's helmet, watching the story unfold before her, Ke briefly wished she could see what lay behind that massive chestplate, and what generated that awesome voice.
A low, reedy wind began to pick up beneath her, and with it came words, rumbling a single question:
"WHO DID THIS?"
The Vhor looked up, and a spindly arm shot out of its cloak, grasping the shoulder of Vuul's gripping arm.
"You did, Vulm! You have abandoned your position, you have abandoned the Hierarchy, and you have abandoned the Emperor!"
The wind of Vuul's orators howled weakly as he replied,
"NO. THIS CANNOT BE TRUE. I AM EVER FAITHFUL."
The Vhor laughed weakly; an old, rusty organ with all valves opened.
"Then why are you here, Vulm? Why are you not at the side of your fellow Vulm, where you belong? Why are you not protecting our Imperium, Vulm?" The Vhor's grip on Vuul's shoulder tightened, as the dying Alvum grew more desperate. "Why are you not performing your holy duty, Vulm?!"
"I AM HERE AGAINST MY WILL, YET I AM STILL YOUR INFERIOR, AS IT SHOULD BE."
"State your identity, Alvum!"
The sharp order whipped through Vuul's body, and he responded reflexively, all orators smoothly and crisply howling out lines which had been drilled into him from birth.
"VULM'MRAM'VUUL, BATTLECLERIC, SIX OF ELEVEN OF THE MRAM LINEAGE"
"And what is the duty of a Vulm of the Mram lineage?"
"TO DESTROY ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE; TO MAINTAIN THE SAFETY AND PURITY OF THE CORE WORLDS"
"So tell me, Vulm'mram'Vuul, how can you maintain the safety and purity of the Core Worlds from here? You cannot! You have not! What you see around you is a result of your dereliction! You have allowed enemies of the Empire to corrupt the Core, and you alone are to blame!"
The Vhor took in a final shuddering breath, and formed his next words carefully.
"I, Vhor'vool'Zhan, hereby declare you, Vulm'mram'Vuul, a Vulm no longer. You are now simply Vuul, casteless, pastless, abandoned by the Hierarchy as you have abandoned it! The Alvum curse you! The Emperor curses you! Die alone and unknown!"
The Vhor went limp. Its arm slip off Vuul's shoulder. The seconds oozed by, as Vuul continued to kneel before the Vhor's corpse, unmoving, silent. Ke clung nervously to the battlecleric's head. Should she say something? She couldn't tell how he felt. Probably really bad. Was now really the best time to reveal a rather large spider had been sitting on his head for quite some time? As she sat there, considering, Vuul seemed to reach some kind of decision. The reedy wind of his exposed orators picked up, and another word rumbled through the valley.
"NO."
Vuul stood, picking up Blaze and Subjugate as he did so. His chestplate closed.
"THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE HERE. I AM STILL LOYAL! I AM STILL A VULM, AND I WILL CARRY OUT MY DUTY! DO YOU HEAR ME, TORMENTOR? I AM EVER FAITHFUL TO THE PRIME! I AM EVER FAITHFUL TO YOU! I WILL PROVE MY WORTH TO YOU, BY DESTROYING THE ONE OF THE HATED HUMANS, THE GREATEST OF THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE! I AM FAITHFUL! EVER FAITHFUL!"
Vuul had entered a run at the beginning of his tirade, and was now in a full-blown charge. Blaze and Subjugate thrust before him, the Battlecleric had worked himself into a battle trance, and would not stop moving until he'd killed something. Preferably Martin.
Elsewhere, the Tormentor watched the raging Alvum with a slight sense of unease. He'd only meant to scare the primitive organic, not whip him into a religious frenzy. He glanced over to another section of the canvas, where his newest creation was terrorizing the annoyingly cheery cartoon and his friends. He was having too much fun with the other contestants for this walking tank to rain on his parade, and besides, wherever Vuul went, someone was almost certainly going to die.
He'd have to delay the rampaging battlecleric, somehow...
Vuul ran. He could see figures ahead of him, growing ever-closer. He did not care who they were; if his target was not among them, he would soon find out.
Suddenly, just as he was about to be able to make out details, the distance between him and the figures grew, and a gaping chasm opened up at his feet. Without missing a beat, Vuul launched himself off its edge, towards the other side. The chasm expanded, the far end suddenly hopelessly out of reach. Vuul adapted quickly. He fired the plasma cannon at the far wall of the chasm, shattering the canvas into an avalanche of debris. Simultaneously, he twisted his upper torso around, and barked out a single word, "FLIGHT!". The forceful expulsion of sound thrust Vuul forwards, closing the gap between himself and the still-collapsing wall quickly. He returned Blaze and Subjugate to the Furious just as he planted a hoof firmly on a large piece of falling canvas. He pushed off, aiming another shout at his legs as he did so. His gripping hand latched onto another piece of debris, further up, and pulled as his voice pushed.
Vuul climbed, as he could do nothing else. He had become an inevitability; inexorable, unstoppable. He would stop only with a death. And so Vuul climbed a collapsing cliff-face, and the Tormentor sighed at this distressingly persistent contestant. If the crazed Alvum wanted to run at things, let him run at things.
Vuul spent the next few hours running a nearly impossible obstacle course at the Tormentor's whim. At first they were obviously placed just to slow the Battlecleric down, but the Tormentor gradually grew bored of boring, mostly-not-lethal obstacles, and began getting more... inventive.
By the time Vuul finally reached a group of actual contestants, he'd been fighting through a guantlet of unnatural, insane, unpredictable traps and enemies, and the scene presented before him was not a noticeable separation from the established norm. Vuul eyed up the giant human before him. Its size did not concern him. So far as Vuul was concerned, this was simply another challenge to see how quickly he could kill everything in his sight.
Blaze and Subjugate slid into his grip, and his quickarms drew two of the Emperor's Gaze plasma pistols. Vuul's stance shifted, his orators began the slow pulse of a new battle chant, and the battle began.
Earlier, in a newly-emptied valley...
Given that Vuul's armor offered a somewhat limited vertical perspective, the Battlecleric was unaware of Ke floating down on top of him. Nor was he completely aware of her as her voice wove its way through his mind, trapped as he still was in the fading euphoria of the battle trance. Nevertheless, he was still aware of the words themselves, and their haunting request spurred him into action. Rituals and tactics and incantations presented themselves in his mind, and his trained instinct pulled from them the Ritual of the Duel. His orators began the deep, pulsing sub-sonic rumble of Vulm'mram'Kham against Tyver Boole; a choice Vuul felt appropriate, given the incantation was first sung by one of his ancestors during a fight against a particularly dangerous human. He would make it a worthy battle chant.
His unnoticed guest clung to his helmet desperately, as the Battlecleric burst forwards towards the not-quite-human. In the same moment, he fired Blaze and Subjugate. A thick, coherent beam of crackling blue-white plasma lanced towards the Not-Martin, but suddenly he was not in its path. A loud KRA-KOOM! echoed across the poorly-drawn valley, and from off to Vuul's side a ring of air expanded. In its center was the Not-Martin, grinning manically, the barrel of his gun-arm still glowing from the weapon's discharge.
But as visually impaired as Vuul was vertically, he was in no sense handicapped for objects moving on his same relative plane. His mind received input from the 360-degree sensory strip which wrapped around his head, and processed all the information simultaneously. Where a two-eyed being may have been caught unawares by Not-Martin's impossible speed, Vuul had tracked the motion as it happened, and dodged the incoming blast even as it was fired, pushing himself towards the Not-Martin, remaining on the offensive.
If this had been a real valley, dirt and pebbles would be vibrating and bouncing at this moment, as the sub-sonics from Vuul's battle chant began to pick up. Their deep rumbling, just below the range of hearing, could be felt in Ke's exoskeleton. Her whole body began to vibrate as Vuul launched into the chant.
"WITHER!"
Vuul was nearly on top of the Not-Martin as the word exploded from his chest. Its arm, which had been lining up another shot, was torn from its socket, and sent flying across the valley. The poorly-made copy attempted to keep its balance against the onslaught of sound, and Vuul allowed Blaze and Subjugate to render its holy judgement upon the copy.
As the white-hot crater which had been the Not-Martin slowly cooled, Vuul felt some dissatisfaction in how quickly the duel had ended. He'd only gotten out a single word of the battle chant; The Ritual was not complete. His orators were still maintaining the subsonic rumble of the battle chant, and his body hungered with lust for combat. On his helmet, still unnoticed, Ke trembled, sharing Vuul's thirst for more.
It was in this state that the Tormentor found Vuul and Ke, after having brought his attention back to the stray contestants. Noting with some disappointment that his Martin-horror had been so easily defeated, the Tormentor decided to try a different tack...
Manic laughter drifted across the valley, its origin uncertain. Vuul tensed, readying for a new opponent, and when the air behind him rippled as some new enemy began to appear, his arm was already whipping around to cast down Blaze and Subjugate's holy fire upon them.
Yet, with his movement halfway complete, a nagging sense of uncertainty began to eat at him. The shape of this enemy looked... familiar. It wasn't until Blaze and Subjugate began to spin up once more in anticipation of being fired that Vuul realized what he was about to annihilate. It was an Alvum. A Lorr; a caste of the priesthood, dedicated to studying the Holy Word.
In a space beyond spaces, the Tormentor cackled, and gave an ever so slight nudge in just the right place...
Vuul watched in horror as his arm continued to move despite his mind's protests. He felt his skin crawl as Blaze and Subjugate thrummed with holy fire. He nearly cried out in angry disbelief as his finger pulled the trigger. Blaze and Subjugate pushed itself against him as the plasma tore through the helpless Lorr. Its weak orators whistled hollowly as it died, its cries growing ever weaker, until silence filled the valley.
Vuul stood, too stunned to move. Atop his helmet, the frail remembrancer held her breath, uncertain what the warrior beneath her would do.
Vuul didn't have time to do anything. Before he could collect himself, the valley was suddenly filled with the corpses of other Alvum, from all castes. Mutilated, maimed, rotting corpses; sputtering, gasping, Alvum lay scattered amongst them. Vuul, attempting to regain some sense of composure, quickly identified the closest of the dying Alvum, and rushed over to help him; a Vhor, the caste of the Justicars and Arbiters. Vuul considered himself fortunate to have found one who delivers the Emperor's Divine Justice here; in the Hierarchy, they lay above the Vulm, Vuul's Warmonk caste. Surely this Vhor would direct him to whoever was responsible for this... carnage.
Vuul knelt next to the shuddering Vhor, and lay the plasma cannon on the ground at his side. There came a hissing from the Battlecleric's chest, as panels shifted and locks disengaged. Still perched on Vuul's helmet, watching the story unfold before her, Ke briefly wished she could see what lay behind that massive chestplate, and what generated that awesome voice.
A low, reedy wind began to pick up beneath her, and with it came words, rumbling a single question:
"WHO DID THIS?"
The Vhor looked up, and a spindly arm shot out of its cloak, grasping the shoulder of Vuul's gripping arm.
"You did, Vulm! You have abandoned your position, you have abandoned the Hierarchy, and you have abandoned the Emperor!"
The wind of Vuul's orators howled weakly as he replied,
"NO. THIS CANNOT BE TRUE. I AM EVER FAITHFUL."
The Vhor laughed weakly; an old, rusty organ with all valves opened.
"Then why are you here, Vulm? Why are you not at the side of your fellow Vulm, where you belong? Why are you not protecting our Imperium, Vulm?" The Vhor's grip on Vuul's shoulder tightened, as the dying Alvum grew more desperate. "Why are you not performing your holy duty, Vulm?!"
"I AM HERE AGAINST MY WILL, YET I AM STILL YOUR INFERIOR, AS IT SHOULD BE."
"State your identity, Alvum!"
The sharp order whipped through Vuul's body, and he responded reflexively, all orators smoothly and crisply howling out lines which had been drilled into him from birth.
"VULM'MRAM'VUUL, BATTLECLERIC, SIX OF ELEVEN OF THE MRAM LINEAGE"
"And what is the duty of a Vulm of the Mram lineage?"
"TO DESTROY ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE; TO MAINTAIN THE SAFETY AND PURITY OF THE CORE WORLDS"
"So tell me, Vulm'mram'Vuul, how can you maintain the safety and purity of the Core Worlds from here? You cannot! You have not! What you see around you is a result of your dereliction! You have allowed enemies of the Empire to corrupt the Core, and you alone are to blame!"
The Vhor took in a final shuddering breath, and formed his next words carefully.
"I, Vhor'vool'Zhan, hereby declare you, Vulm'mram'Vuul, a Vulm no longer. You are now simply Vuul, casteless, pastless, abandoned by the Hierarchy as you have abandoned it! The Alvum curse you! The Emperor curses you! Die alone and unknown!"
The Vhor went limp. Its arm slip off Vuul's shoulder. The seconds oozed by, as Vuul continued to kneel before the Vhor's corpse, unmoving, silent. Ke clung nervously to the battlecleric's head. Should she say something? She couldn't tell how he felt. Probably really bad. Was now really the best time to reveal a rather large spider had been sitting on his head for quite some time? As she sat there, considering, Vuul seemed to reach some kind of decision. The reedy wind of his exposed orators picked up, and another word rumbled through the valley.
"NO."
Vuul stood, picking up Blaze and Subjugate as he did so. His chestplate closed.
"THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE ARE HERE. I AM STILL LOYAL! I AM STILL A VULM, AND I WILL CARRY OUT MY DUTY! DO YOU HEAR ME, TORMENTOR? I AM EVER FAITHFUL TO THE PRIME! I AM EVER FAITHFUL TO YOU! I WILL PROVE MY WORTH TO YOU, BY DESTROYING THE ONE OF THE HATED HUMANS, THE GREATEST OF THE ENEMIES OF THE EMPIRE! I AM FAITHFUL! EVER FAITHFUL!"
Vuul had entered a run at the beginning of his tirade, and was now in a full-blown charge. Blaze and Subjugate thrust before him, the Battlecleric had worked himself into a battle trance, and would not stop moving until he'd killed something. Preferably Martin.
Elsewhere, the Tormentor watched the raging Alvum with a slight sense of unease. He'd only meant to scare the primitive organic, not whip him into a religious frenzy. He glanced over to another section of the canvas, where his newest creation was terrorizing the annoyingly cheery cartoon and his friends. He was having too much fun with the other contestants for this walking tank to rain on his parade, and besides, wherever Vuul went, someone was almost certainly going to die.
He'd have to delay the rampaging battlecleric, somehow...
Vuul ran. He could see figures ahead of him, growing ever-closer. He did not care who they were; if his target was not among them, he would soon find out.
Suddenly, just as he was about to be able to make out details, the distance between him and the figures grew, and a gaping chasm opened up at his feet. Without missing a beat, Vuul launched himself off its edge, towards the other side. The chasm expanded, the far end suddenly hopelessly out of reach. Vuul adapted quickly. He fired the plasma cannon at the far wall of the chasm, shattering the canvas into an avalanche of debris. Simultaneously, he twisted his upper torso around, and barked out a single word, "FLIGHT!". The forceful expulsion of sound thrust Vuul forwards, closing the gap between himself and the still-collapsing wall quickly. He returned Blaze and Subjugate to the Furious just as he planted a hoof firmly on a large piece of falling canvas. He pushed off, aiming another shout at his legs as he did so. His gripping hand latched onto another piece of debris, further up, and pulled as his voice pushed.
Vuul climbed, as he could do nothing else. He had become an inevitability; inexorable, unstoppable. He would stop only with a death. And so Vuul climbed a collapsing cliff-face, and the Tormentor sighed at this distressingly persistent contestant. If the crazed Alvum wanted to run at things, let him run at things.
Vuul spent the next few hours running a nearly impossible obstacle course at the Tormentor's whim. At first they were obviously placed just to slow the Battlecleric down, but the Tormentor gradually grew bored of boring, mostly-not-lethal obstacles, and began getting more... inventive.
By the time Vuul finally reached a group of actual contestants, he'd been fighting through a guantlet of unnatural, insane, unpredictable traps and enemies, and the scene presented before him was not a noticeable separation from the established norm. Vuul eyed up the giant human before him. Its size did not concern him. So far as Vuul was concerned, this was simply another challenge to see how quickly he could kill everything in his sight.
Blaze and Subjugate slid into his grip, and his quickarms drew two of the Emperor's Gaze plasma pistols. Vuul's stance shifted, his orators began the slow pulse of a new battle chant, and the battle began.