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| Something Wicked This Way Comes... Again; Finished | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 26 2014, 04:14 PM (1,722 Views) | |
| SemperMemor | Jul 5 2015, 03:03 PM Post #61 |
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Majestic Space Duck
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Makani and Lumi; falling behind Josiah, fighting the Mycotic’s worm load, and losing a little more than they bargained for It was all wrong. So very wrong. The enormous creature whined like a cornered canine and bowed his belly to the earth beneath the weight of growing anxiety and fear. Wide, white-rimmed eyes scanned the deepening forest as they pressed on. The foreign, rotting blood from their close encounter seeped between the gilded scales. Josiah’s torch far ahead flickered against the pale armor and drew shadows in the canopied ceiling. Lumiere looked around with uncomfortable jerks as their high relief danced into warped, unwholesome images. It was a trick of the light, something he was more than used to, but in a place where macabre limbs and disembodied integument moved independent of their natural settings, that knowledge was not comforting. “I don’t like this, Makani,” the dragon whined again. “I want to go home.” His crest quivered against his neck between high alert and flattened terror. His belly lurched as the company continued to inch forward. Makani looked toward his Wing before responding. “Me, too,” he murmured beneath his breath, and gently patted his dragon. Corded muscles tensed beneath his legs. He’d long grown accustomed to knowing when Lumi grew upset by palpable body language, even if his voice and bond weren’t painfully apparent signs. “Why don’t we turn up the brightness?” the Talon encouraged. He turned his sights away from Lumiere and continued to scan the underbrush. “A bit more can’t hurt.” Warm, radiating magic flickered once more into rapt attention. It took a moment for the gentle glow around the dragon’s body to become noticeably stronger. It might have been more palpable at first to the individuals closest to him. Golden scales amplified the inner radiance tenfold; he practically glittered in the depths of the forest. So bathed in light, it would have been an almost serene picture if it weren’t for the deafening silence that befell them. No insects chirped to the growing light of the waning moon that peered down through the cavernous canopies with her disdainful frown. No bats flitted through the stagnant air. It became uncomfortably apparent the further they traveled. The forest closed in on them and reached thickly overhead before too long. The brief glimpse of moonlight faded into obscurity. Some minutes passed along their quiet sojourn before Makani began to feel a strange sensation at his fingertips. Or, more accurately, lack thereof. He retracted his left from the foresaddle and turned the gloved fingers over. One by one, they obeyed, but not without a rather dizzying, euphoric sensation. He looked up somewhat toward his mount. Lumiere waddling forward at Josiah’s heels, hunched over, but seemed neither bothered by the same sensation or did not realize it. He shook his head to try and shake it off. “Did you say something?” Lumiere startled. His head whipped around at the motion in his peripheral vision. Nearly pitch eyes, the pupils so dilated, honed in on his rider. Makani began to open his mouth, but whatever words his viscous tongue tried to conjure were lost as a droplet that should not have fallen plopped against Lumiere’s neck. It felt no different than a large raindrop, but dawning terror supplied that there was no sane explanation for rainfall within a tunnel. The dragon turned his head slightly to look at what had landed. Translucent yellow of plasma mixed with fetid, rotting blood dribbled from the splattered impact. They looked up, together, to gape at the fleshy ceiling. Realization came in time with a great, shuddering collapse of a section behind them. “Oh no.” Lumiere’s crest flattened against his neck as the light around him disappeared immediately. He reared in the opposite direction of the falling, writhing mass of dismembered flesh and bone. The only way out was through. Makani did his best to grip the saddle as Lumiere reared and bounded toward the end of the tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him. “This is so bad!” he wailed. “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this! Why did we do this, Makani? Whywhywhywhywhy----a-aAAH!” The Celestial’s shorter forelimbs tripped as he bumbled clear of the tunnel’s loathsome opening. His head smacked against the ground with a palpable thwack, his body following only slightly behind. Unconsciousness quickly claimed the enormous dragon. His back end planted in the moist soil, careening detritus into the tepid air. The Celestialrider’s only saving grace from horrific whiplash was the mechanical flattening of his body as flush against his dragon as possible as they went down. The radiant light surrounding the dragon flickered and dissipated as he came to a standstill. “Lumi?” Makani called. He leaned forward in the saddle and thumped the dragon’s neck with a gloved hand. There was no response. His stomach lurched and twisted itself into a cruel knot. He called again, anxiety lacing his words, “Lumiere! Are you alright?” The Talon shuffled with the binding straps of his saddle as his heart leapt to his throat. It took a moment for him to unbuckle himself, but soon after the older rider was quickly scaling down his dragon’s collapsed forearm and running toward the Celestial’s plumed head. The great inspiratory whoosh of his lungs indicated that he was clearly breathing, but nothing else moved once the dust had settled across his gilded hide. A lifetime’s worth of medical protocol should have kicked in at this point. It fell short of Makani as he neared Lumiere’s slack face. Panic soon overrode Talon training. He wrenched off the riding goggles and began to bat at the softer flesh around his eyes and nostrils with his numb hands. “Come on, Lumi, wake up!” It didn’t work. Makani leapt toward Lumiere’s right set of horns and pulled himself up by gripping the base of the shattered stumps. Fidgeting hands pushed aside the local feathers to expose a dark, glimmering garnet the side of particularly large dinnerplate. Seeing the garnet it gave him a moment of pause. This better work, he thought, viewing the dragon’s crystal. Makani ripped one of his gloves off and gave the polished stone a careful rasp with his knuckles. Like clockwork, the disturbed dragon began to stir. First, his ears twitched, followed by flared nostrils, and finally a great rumbling of shifting muscle against the littered earth. Makani released his handhold against Lumiere’s horns and dropped back to the ground. He shuffled closer to his dragon’s face as he began to resume consciousness. Heavy golden eyelids fluttered open with a slow grogginess. “Oh, ‘llo Mmkani.” He blinked, eyes not quite focused. However, even without the head injury the dragon fought to focus against the now suffocating pheromones hanging in the air. Diwe make it ‘ome yet?” “No, not yet,” he sighed. His stomach settled once more, though it wasn’t a dramatic change. He looked around as the rest of their party began to move along. “Come on, dear, we need to get going again. Be careful when you stand up. You hit your head. I’ll walk beside you.” Insidious, numbing musk hung heavy to the ground, making it difficult for him to clear his head until he managed to stand; that alone was a feat. It was quite the effort for the Celestial to heave himself back into any sort of standing position. Lumiere wheezed as he stood. His footing felt all wrong. His vision hazed over, not that he wasn’t already disorientated by his up close and personal date with the ground. “Ow,” he groaned. Makani gave his forelegs a wide enough berth as he led the dragon forward. At some point, and he wasn’t quite sure when, he had unsheathed his sword in his right hand. It was strange; he couldn’t even feel the grip or pommel against his hand. The silvery, live edge caught Josiah’s distance torch flare every so often and cut through the foggy underbrush. Makani shook his head at the light. His head began to grow uncomfortably light. His tongue stilled in his mouth. Should he speak up about this? Really? Was it so bad? The knowledge of inherent danger clouded as that wondrous, encompassing sensation of peace penetrated muscle, mind, and bone. He wandered forward on obedient legs into the mouth of the awaiting Mother. Her footsteps grew louder as she, in turn, approached them. It wasn’t long before the hive’s queen showed her vessel. Makani didn’t move. His hand gripped the sword a little tighter in his palm, but it wasn’t something he was actively aware of. Should he have been? He wasn’t sure. Heat rose to his cheeks as the pheromones coallescened with the release of a thousand hungry, writhing maggots. Lumiere, perhaps because with head so lofted above the ground-creeping musk, was the first to break at the macabre sight. “Oh no!” the dragon wailed. His hind end seemed to backpeddle on it’s own accord as the earth became littered with writhing, hungry white worms. “No no no no no no.” He stomped and swatted at them. The ground shook with each concussive stamp, but he was not quick enough. It was like trying to smack a swarm of flies. Makani nearly toppled over in the rush of the swarm. It wasn’t until one of them latched onto his arm that the danger became slightly more real. Adrenaline coursed his system with a powerful shot, waking up his nervous system from it’s vacation with a powerful gut reaction. He leapt into a fight or flight stance and began to shake. He pounded the white worm with his free fist. It fell off only after he successfully bashed in it’s skull, but its jaws took their fair share of flesh with them in the process. Blood welled to the surface of the grisly wound. Makani froze, sword nearly in the dirt as the scent began to draw the eyes of encroaching little demons. “Come on, Lumi!” Makani roared. “Just blast them!” He picked up his sword again, his own blood running down the fist and the blade, and began to hack through the writhing mass toward the offending Abyssal. Lumiere’s shrill cries gave him enough of an anchor to keep his wits just functionally around him. The air around the dragon began to grow hot in response to his barked order, hot enough that Makani had to push further on or risk a roasting of his own. When the blasts began to come from behind, Makani became aware that the dragon’s aim was wildly inaccurate; however, in this moment, it didn’t matter a whole lot. There were too many of them. He couldn’t spare Lumiere a glance back. Snapping teeth leapt up into his face, and it wasn’t long before the Celestialrider required every ounce of his attention to keep himself upright and fending them off. Those that managed to latch on were met with a hastily thrown dagger’s point or a cleaving sword edge. More often than not he took off his own skin in attempting to free himself, but that was a small price to pay in exchange for keeping his limb his own. Some twenty paces behind, Lumiere began to grow exhausted. Blast after searing blast would not last. He was old, experienced, but even he could not keep up that extended expenditure of energy for long. Drugged carelessness drew a heavy toll; his aim and force of magic became compromised to hold the many worms at bay. Those that hit home tore at his skin and scales. He was only slightly better off than his rider in that they would have a tougher time getting through his armor. However, it wouldn’t last. Lumiere began to scrabble at his own hide, flicking away the insipid creatures along with ravaged patches of scales and feathers. They didn’t seem to end. He roared at them and the mother they came from, bleating his futile anger at the source. Magic and heat began to charge within his belly again. The skin between his scales along his abdomen, chest, throat, and jaws grew brighter, almost pushing the armor apart with the pooling light. Parasites took their chance and leapt upon him while he was preoccupied. They buried their heads into his legs, his toes, his tail while Lumiere tried his best to make his shot count. Practiced control kept the innate power surging as he readied himself. His trajectory, unfortunately, was another beast entirely. As his jaws opened, his vision betrayed him, and the wondrous blast of searing light that he thought would smack unopposed directly into Seether…fell slightly to the left of its intended home. It was only slight, but it was enough. A moment later, the unmistakable sound of his rider’s agonized scream ripped through his ears and bond. The acrid smell of charred flesh wafted high and burned at the dragon’s sensitive nares. Lumiere blinked, mortified, as he looked down toward his rider's wavering silhouette. Makani’s sword, and the right arm that held it, were gone. |
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| CloakAndDagger | Jul 19 2015, 12:34 PM Post #62 |
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THE DUNGEON MASTER
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The Right Path, The Finale The fire, wild and unrelenting, devoured. It ran like a broken phalanx of red speartips and swords over the wetly rotted side of the broken mycotic. Scorched, defiled flesh flit from her sides in flickers of ash and char. The crackle and smell of burning skin filled the already stifling air with a thick, choking smoke, but the enormous host was unconcerned now. The screaming had stopped. Her screaming had stopped and now she could finally die. The worm’s hungry tendrils were gone and what was left of the mycotic’s brain kindled once with a flare of synaptic electricity before going dark. Her good legs fell out from under her. Her one eye rolled blankly up, finished, and the body came down. For her, Death was an old friend finally allowed to come close. The conqueror worm, however, was filled with a different sort of fire. Her thoughts, reptilian and focused, were of anger and self preservation, and as the body of her host collapsed around her, the pale shape dragged herself from the broken maw like a rat from a sinking ship. And, while she escaped the teeth of her old shell, a second set came leaping at her over the licking flames of extending fire. The dire was a reflection of her own violence -- anger to anger -- but that was not all that was loosed. Swords approached in steel curves of looming promise. A caustic spill filled the air. And then there was the light. White, brilliant, and unforgiving, the pulse of sun shot over her children like a cleansing touch. This was a hot swath of radiation that no fire, no volcanic heat could ever hope to imitate. It was as blinding as it was powerful and those unlucky few that were caught in its graces were turned to particulates like demons upon holy ground. The light quickened and passed like comet shafts over and over again, but even holy orders fall upon the sinful and blessed alike. The approach of blessing was not without cost. The other half of the great beacon was turned by the light and, caught in the brilliance, was left with less than he came with. Gone was part of his mortal flesh, taken by the holy countenance. The eucharistic blaze streamed from the mouth of the heavenly beast as a storm, and though it caught an innocent in the swath of destruction, its ultimate aim still held truth. Seether was free from the encompassing form that had held her for more years than any other host. The freedom was so limiting, so uncovering that she wasn't even able to truly regulate her own body temperature. The sudden pierce of fangs through her side was like being wrent through by wet fire. She screamed. They all screamed. And, as hot as the teeth were, the swords were ice in equal measure. Caustic and callous as it ate away at her, the acid tore at her side with a two-fold flame of heat and pain. Seether forced free of the dire's bite long enough to send a twin jet of acid back to the forest, but doing so left more than a little of her weakened body in the unquenched maw of the wolf. She pulled and writhed but the shape of her power did not lend itself well to fighting -- not like this. The mother worm, having devoured and taken and spread her unholy influence through this jungle for over three years; having pulled so many women and children and men into a dying, infesting host of a family; having broken so many lives just to keep on living, was ultimately no more than a defenseless snake when uncovered. Even her acid was pale in comparison to her peers. Despite this, the fought for what she had taken. She fought to live, because that's all she'd been able to do for her nearly forty years of life. She bit and scratched and shrieked. She dragged her soft, buttery claws over her assailants. She called her children to her, and they came in whatever bent or broken shape they had left. And, even as she saw the light coming, she still tried to break free. The stream of white that took Makani's arm took half her body with it. A snake cut in two, she reeled and rolled over herself in a fearful mania. She tore herself out of reach of the swords and teeth, finally, but it was only to knot herself up in the pain of loss. Pain. Pain. The sounds that peeled from her mouth were scared and angry and sad. She didn't want to die. All she had ever done was tried to live. That was all she knew. And now she would have to learn how to die. She was an old worm. She was a worm who knew how to survive, though she had never grown anywhere near as big and strong as her siblings. Still a tiny, slippery thing after her first few months, she'd taken her own bonded as a first host and, as she'd slipped herself into the woman's brain, she's come in contact with something she could only begin to grasp -- sentience. Seether was a dragon, tainted and only half souled, but she was not a creature of true thought. She was an animal. And there, inside the other half of herself, she'd finally discovered all the shapes and forms of emotion, of thinking, of dreaming. She was no longer so simple. Inside another person, she could be whole. But it came at such a price, for she also had to eat the body from the inside out to survive. Seether's bonded lasted only a short time as the growing worm became too big to hold, but when the abyssal had finally left the body, the thoughlessness returned. She was again reduced to an empty-feeling simplicity. She could not fully remember her time before, but the sensation of such loss was all-consuming and her hunger to return was all-encompassing. She would Live. She had to live. She had to know. And so she kept taking. And she kept living through the minds of others. Within them, she could understand their pain and fear -- a thing was taking over their bodies -- so she altered her ways. She ate the pain centers first. It would not be so bad. They would never know, never care, never feel their body horribly rotting from their bones as their internal organs liquified. They would never really know the terrible death the worm would put them through. It would never hurt. Death, however, would always come for them. And, now, it would come for her. In the simplicity of her thoughts now, she would never understand more than the fear and discomfort of its impending touch. She would only know the pain. Only see the loss. And even to the very end of her thrashing, though her lower body had been turned to ash in a fire hotter than the sun, she only wanted to live. Her children, the small images of her that hung to the veils and vessels of the dead, pressed through the throng of the living to stand around her as quietly rotting statues. Even the burrowed ones, those that had tried to anchor themselves in the living dragons and men and dires, paused in their contorting work and seemed to sag against the borrowed bodies. They could do nothing. They knew that well enough. More than she did, they could feel what was coming. The worm groped and reached out for the warm bodies around her. Her small, webbed claw clutched the nearest soul by her like a child trying to pull themselves up with the help of another. From her petaled mouth, a serpentine tendril followed her arm to the living flesh it touched and, for a moment as it touched the other person beyond its true hold, Seether felt a wave of feeling -- of reason and rationality. And then she was gone. And her children, all of them, fell around her like wheat against a scythe. The ones that had miraculously burrowed inside the other living creatures silently died. They bodies would dissolve, as if they had just been nothing all along, but the scars would remain. The threat was over. Now, perhaps only in the grand awakening of death, she would finally be able to dream on her own. The End (((OCC))) WHAUG FINALLY. AHHHH. Thank you so much for all your help, everyone! This end has been a long time coming and every single one of you that participated aided in the long road to get there. Thank you for your time and patience. Seether is finally dead and all of her awful, leechy children have gone with her. You all win. Congradulations. ![]() I hope the journey from then to now has been a good one. <333 It was fantastic to write this with you. And thank you again. -Kess |
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5:40 PM Jul 10