Re: The Fatal Conflict (GBS2G7) (Round 3: The Infinite Playground!)
12-17-2011, 11:06 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Ixcalibur.
Kaja gazed down at the thing that had brought him here, to the shadow of the necropolis, to what he believed would likely, if he were not careful, be his end. In front of him, no more than a stone’s throw away, closer than he had ever been before nonetheless, stood a sand-necropolis; a jumble of towers and spires of dark sand, a dark and twisted mockery of a city made by creatures that had long since succumbed to the embrace of death. It seemed to sink into the terrain, the warm sand that pooled around his feet, as though it was part of it, almost as though the necropolis was aspiring to be a natural formation. The air was thick with the scent of the herb in question; the only reason he had dared venture this close to the structure in the first place. It was at first sniff sickly sweet, like the smell of toffee and honey and strings of red liquorice, though underneath that there hung the odour of something rancid, something rotting in the sun. It was difficult to notice it at first, but step by step, moment by moment it was more and more potent, until it was dominant, until it overpowered the sweet taste that had led him here.
Though Kaja had not felt the compulsion to eat since he had died, he could not help but find himself doubled over on the sand retching up something. After a minute of undignified minute of coughing in the sand, Kaja climbed back to his feet and took another look at the plant. Growing from the sands in front of him was something that upon first glance Kaja had been unable to identify as a plant at all. It was a rough sphere of flesh, crisscrossed with a thatch of gnarled black thorns. Dark trails of dried blood streamed down the side of the disturbing plant from where the thorns dug into the pale flesh. Kaja quickly reached the obvious conclusion, the magic of the necropolis, the taint of the undeath its residents were plagued with, had seeped out into the ecosystem and this thing, this awful thing, was the result.
Under any other circumstances Kaja would have walked away; he would have turned his back upon the product of the undead corruption and left without a second thought. There were a multitude of reasons why this was the right thing to do and the vast majority of them were probably stirring amongst the black sands of the necropolis as he dithered. The problem was that somehow his supplies had been exhausted. Blearily he fumbled through his pouches searching for a single usable herb. There was none to be found, just the odd dash of powder emptied in a hurry. How had this happened? He tried to think back, to remember using such vast quantities of herbs, but after a certain point everything got confused. His searching fingers found a hilt slid into his belt and slowly drew the blood red blade. He twisted it this way and that, gazing at his own reflection in the semi-familiar blade. He’d seen something like it before, in a dream he’d had once. He couldn’t remember how it had ended.
Suddenly he was drawn from his introspection. There was a subtle change in the tone of the world around him. At once he knew that he had come too close. Though he couldn’t exactly say how he knew, he knew he’d been spotted, he knew that somewhere in the sands around him they were watching him, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Perhaps that moment had already been and gone and they were simply toying with him; their cruel laughter caught in their long dead throats. The world around him seemed unusually silent, almost monochrome, as though the world itself was holding its breath in anticipation of that first strike, of the moment Kaja would die; the consequence of one stupid mistake. Even the perpetual bubbling and gurgle of his contraption seemed muted, as though it was all happening to someone else, someone far away.
The only noise was the slow crunch of footsteps on the sand. Kaja’s grip tightened on the blade though he didn’t really believe a weapon he had no experience with and no training in would do him any real good against the scourged. From where they came it was impossible to tell. Rotten bandages wrapped tight around plagued skin; dark red pinprick eyes burning through the gaps. They approached him cautiously; probably nervous at seeing something so unusual, though that would require them to be capable of such an emotion, something of which Kaja was very doubtful. Once, shortly after he had been kicked out of his tribe after his death, he had considered the possibility that the scourged wouldn’t balk at the sight of him. He’d been wrong of course. He was too living for the dead and too dead for the living.
One of the scourged went to say something but all that came out was a long low rasp, a ‘Hkajaakakajh’. Kaja stared as its rotten tongue floundered around fruitlessly trying to form words despite the lack of a lower jaw. This wasn’t right. This was not how this was supposed to happen. Most that were taken by the scourged never even saw them coming before they met their unfortunate ends. Kaja had guessed he was a special case due to what he was. He figured that they may have wanted to get a closer look before they struck him down, but why were they trying to engage him in conversation? A thought occurred to him, a bitter thought that set his face into a scowl.
“I am not one of you.” He said. “You are monsters. You are evil disgusting monsters. You are all that is wrong with the world. I’ve seen you roll your plague out across unsuspecting villages. I’ve seen you infect entire towns as they slept, butchering anyone resistant to your awful scourge. And for what? Despite your speed, your cunning, your primitive attempts at science I somehow doubt you have a real motive. You’re just monsters acting off instinct, ruining lives for nothing more than the fun of it.”
The scourged drew back at Kaja’s tirade, as though he were the monster here, as though he were the one to be feared. More rasping noises escaped from the dead throat of the scourged who seemed to be the elected spokesmonster of the group.
“No!” Kaja snapped, as he strode towards the scourged in question, his grip angrily tightening around the handle of the scarlet blade. “Don’t you dare talk to me! I am not a monster! I am not one of you!” There was a long moment of silence and then another incomprehensible noise.
Kaja was driven by pure instinct, as he brought the sword around upon the scourged. Something primal, something angry and sadistic seemed to well up inside him, revelling in the slaughter of the scourged, and he revelled with it. They were everything he hated in the world. The swinging of the blade, the easy slicing of the scourged, the scattering of bandaged limbs and the dripping of thick black ichor into the golden sands. They tried to fight back, clawing at his jacket, scratching at his contraption, but it was pathetic. They were little more than a nuisance; he barely even felt their blows. He likened it to being attacked by flies, and he swatted them down just as easily. He chopped and sliced and hacked away until every last one was dead and he was stood in the middle of a slew of dismembered limbs. He could have sworn he heard mad laughter echoing out across the endless desert.
As he stood there, gasping for air and slowly regaining his composure he wondered what he had been so worried about. Why he had worked so hard to avoid any confrontation with the scourged. Why he had been living in fear of such pathetic creatures. Why these jokes had kept him awake at night. He gazed towards the necropolis in the distance. He would take the fight to them. He’d be the cure for the undead blight, and once he was done he would make the living sorry for so casually dismissing him, for throwing away their most powerful weapon out of fear of the unknown. But first… his eyes alighted on the awful plant that had led him here.
He doubted he’d enjoy searching through its fleshy corpse for whatever would be usable as herbs, but he had to make the most of a bad situation. Showing none of the finesse that had been temporarily present during the fight, he raised the sword over the fleshy pod, and brought it down.
The plant screamed
For a second it seemed as though he was in a strange but familiar landscape. Dead children in white robes stained blood red scattered the ground around him. In the distance a thing not dissimilar to the necropolis, but all bright colours which hurt his eyes. The plant was gone, replaced by a sick child curled into a ball, impaled upon Kaja's crimson blade. He looked up at the alchemist with a look of pain and confusion in his eyes. For a heartbeat things were as this.
Then they snapped back to reality and with little fuss and commotion Kaja searched the plant for usable herbs.
Kaja gazed down at the thing that had brought him here, to the shadow of the necropolis, to what he believed would likely, if he were not careful, be his end. In front of him, no more than a stone’s throw away, closer than he had ever been before nonetheless, stood a sand-necropolis; a jumble of towers and spires of dark sand, a dark and twisted mockery of a city made by creatures that had long since succumbed to the embrace of death. It seemed to sink into the terrain, the warm sand that pooled around his feet, as though it was part of it, almost as though the necropolis was aspiring to be a natural formation. The air was thick with the scent of the herb in question; the only reason he had dared venture this close to the structure in the first place. It was at first sniff sickly sweet, like the smell of toffee and honey and strings of red liquorice, though underneath that there hung the odour of something rancid, something rotting in the sun. It was difficult to notice it at first, but step by step, moment by moment it was more and more potent, until it was dominant, until it overpowered the sweet taste that had led him here.
Though Kaja had not felt the compulsion to eat since he had died, he could not help but find himself doubled over on the sand retching up something. After a minute of undignified minute of coughing in the sand, Kaja climbed back to his feet and took another look at the plant. Growing from the sands in front of him was something that upon first glance Kaja had been unable to identify as a plant at all. It was a rough sphere of flesh, crisscrossed with a thatch of gnarled black thorns. Dark trails of dried blood streamed down the side of the disturbing plant from where the thorns dug into the pale flesh. Kaja quickly reached the obvious conclusion, the magic of the necropolis, the taint of the undeath its residents were plagued with, had seeped out into the ecosystem and this thing, this awful thing, was the result.
Under any other circumstances Kaja would have walked away; he would have turned his back upon the product of the undead corruption and left without a second thought. There were a multitude of reasons why this was the right thing to do and the vast majority of them were probably stirring amongst the black sands of the necropolis as he dithered. The problem was that somehow his supplies had been exhausted. Blearily he fumbled through his pouches searching for a single usable herb. There was none to be found, just the odd dash of powder emptied in a hurry. How had this happened? He tried to think back, to remember using such vast quantities of herbs, but after a certain point everything got confused. His searching fingers found a hilt slid into his belt and slowly drew the blood red blade. He twisted it this way and that, gazing at his own reflection in the semi-familiar blade. He’d seen something like it before, in a dream he’d had once. He couldn’t remember how it had ended.
Suddenly he was drawn from his introspection. There was a subtle change in the tone of the world around him. At once he knew that he had come too close. Though he couldn’t exactly say how he knew, he knew he’d been spotted, he knew that somewhere in the sands around him they were watching him, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. Perhaps that moment had already been and gone and they were simply toying with him; their cruel laughter caught in their long dead throats. The world around him seemed unusually silent, almost monochrome, as though the world itself was holding its breath in anticipation of that first strike, of the moment Kaja would die; the consequence of one stupid mistake. Even the perpetual bubbling and gurgle of his contraption seemed muted, as though it was all happening to someone else, someone far away.
The only noise was the slow crunch of footsteps on the sand. Kaja’s grip tightened on the blade though he didn’t really believe a weapon he had no experience with and no training in would do him any real good against the scourged. From where they came it was impossible to tell. Rotten bandages wrapped tight around plagued skin; dark red pinprick eyes burning through the gaps. They approached him cautiously; probably nervous at seeing something so unusual, though that would require them to be capable of such an emotion, something of which Kaja was very doubtful. Once, shortly after he had been kicked out of his tribe after his death, he had considered the possibility that the scourged wouldn’t balk at the sight of him. He’d been wrong of course. He was too living for the dead and too dead for the living.
One of the scourged went to say something but all that came out was a long low rasp, a ‘Hkajaakakajh’. Kaja stared as its rotten tongue floundered around fruitlessly trying to form words despite the lack of a lower jaw. This wasn’t right. This was not how this was supposed to happen. Most that were taken by the scourged never even saw them coming before they met their unfortunate ends. Kaja had guessed he was a special case due to what he was. He figured that they may have wanted to get a closer look before they struck him down, but why were they trying to engage him in conversation? A thought occurred to him, a bitter thought that set his face into a scowl.
“I am not one of you.” He said. “You are monsters. You are evil disgusting monsters. You are all that is wrong with the world. I’ve seen you roll your plague out across unsuspecting villages. I’ve seen you infect entire towns as they slept, butchering anyone resistant to your awful scourge. And for what? Despite your speed, your cunning, your primitive attempts at science I somehow doubt you have a real motive. You’re just monsters acting off instinct, ruining lives for nothing more than the fun of it.”
The scourged drew back at Kaja’s tirade, as though he were the monster here, as though he were the one to be feared. More rasping noises escaped from the dead throat of the scourged who seemed to be the elected spokesmonster of the group.
“No!” Kaja snapped, as he strode towards the scourged in question, his grip angrily tightening around the handle of the scarlet blade. “Don’t you dare talk to me! I am not a monster! I am not one of you!” There was a long moment of silence and then another incomprehensible noise.
Kaja was driven by pure instinct, as he brought the sword around upon the scourged. Something primal, something angry and sadistic seemed to well up inside him, revelling in the slaughter of the scourged, and he revelled with it. They were everything he hated in the world. The swinging of the blade, the easy slicing of the scourged, the scattering of bandaged limbs and the dripping of thick black ichor into the golden sands. They tried to fight back, clawing at his jacket, scratching at his contraption, but it was pathetic. They were little more than a nuisance; he barely even felt their blows. He likened it to being attacked by flies, and he swatted them down just as easily. He chopped and sliced and hacked away until every last one was dead and he was stood in the middle of a slew of dismembered limbs. He could have sworn he heard mad laughter echoing out across the endless desert.
As he stood there, gasping for air and slowly regaining his composure he wondered what he had been so worried about. Why he had worked so hard to avoid any confrontation with the scourged. Why he had been living in fear of such pathetic creatures. Why these jokes had kept him awake at night. He gazed towards the necropolis in the distance. He would take the fight to them. He’d be the cure for the undead blight, and once he was done he would make the living sorry for so casually dismissing him, for throwing away their most powerful weapon out of fear of the unknown. But first… his eyes alighted on the awful plant that had led him here.
He doubted he’d enjoy searching through its fleshy corpse for whatever would be usable as herbs, but he had to make the most of a bad situation. Showing none of the finesse that had been temporarily present during the fight, he raised the sword over the fleshy pod, and brought it down.
The plant screamed
For a second it seemed as though he was in a strange but familiar landscape. Dead children in white robes stained blood red scattered the ground around him. In the distance a thing not dissimilar to the necropolis, but all bright colours which hurt his eyes. The plant was gone, replaced by a sick child curled into a ball, impaled upon Kaja's crimson blade. He looked up at the alchemist with a look of pain and confusion in his eyes. For a heartbeat things were as this.
Then they snapped back to reality and with little fuss and commotion Kaja searched the plant for usable herbs.
Heaven Help Us | Make Room!!!! | I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You
Hang 'Em High | The Only Hope For Me Is You | Zero Percent | Early Sunsets Over Monroeville | DESTROYA | Demolition Lovers | To The End
Surrender The Night | Disenchanted | The Ghost Of You | Party Poison | Vampires Will Never Hurt You | The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You